My blood is boiling at this thread

[chaosisawayoflife]

Warning: contains link to a website full of selfish bridezillas worrying about how a woman breastfeeding at their wedding will ruin the day for them.
here

"Yeah, Feenie, I have...then I have a drink.
I feel complelled rightly or wrongly to challenge the breast-feeding elderly children/baby wearing gang to get a grip and put their baps away and confront their "issues" with being unable to let their baby develop into a child...without 24 hr bitty being on tap."

My 2.11 year old toddler is a very bright, friendly, confident child. Who stays over at her grandma's without milk or me. She starts nursery in a few months and loved her tester sessions, where I sat with the mothers and watched her play with the other children, she never looked backwards she is not clingy at all.

She is no baby, she is very certainly a big girl. She also loves to nurse. DD ran to me yesterday and gave me a big hug and a kiss and she told me that she loved mummy and she loved my milk. I laughed and told her that one day she would be a big girl and not nurse anymore and she shook her head and said big girl now, milk please.

Aww, my heart certainly does melt.

Certainly I have no issues with my children growing up and they are happy to step into the world on their own, partly due to the security they have gained by having some control over when and how they will wean from my breast.

Jude, you sound as though you are carrying a lot of entirely unnecessary guilt over the whole bf/ff/dummy thing - "selfish shit of a mother" etc. I realise this is might not be an attractive idea to you, but do you think this might be part of the reason why you are feeling the need to keep coming back to this again and again?

Jude68,

You seem to be very hard on yourself. Why do you equate dummy and formula use with so many bad terms ? Certainly no one else on this thread feels this way about your mothering.

I do think ZephirineDrouhin overstepped the mark slightly with her comments about your child's dummy use. Though given your harsh words and atttitudes to other posters including me, I can understand why she did so. Not that two wrongs make a right.

However it is interesting that you are preparing your daughter to wean off her dummies in a similar way than I am preparing my daughter to think about weaning.

So we are not that far appart in parenting terms. You are giving your daughter a choice, she has three dummies left and will guard them carefully until she feels ready to give them up on her terms, just like one day my daughter will do the same with her nursing sessions.

I don'y know. Perhaps there's a grain of truth in what you say Zeph. If I'd really wanted to continue bfing for longer than the 6/7 months I managed, maybe I could have.
I was determined with DD2 that she would have a daily bottle of expressed or formula milk because for me, constant bfing a newborn without a break (dd1 fed/slept on me continually and would wake up screaming if moved) and it drove me to the brink.

In case it makes any difference, Jude, I am not strictly a natural term breastfeeder myself. Very much like you, I have given my daughter a cut-off and then after that no more. And I didn't manage even a week of exclusive bf - always mixed feeding, so your breastfeeding credentials are way better than mine. If you're going to hell for it, I'll be there before you.

Babies - I thought the fact that I followed my comments about dummy use with the words "do you find these questions dumb and offensive" made it clear that I know they are dumb offensive questions - I was trying to illustrate how these questions sound when they are asked (as they have been repeatedly on here) about breasfeeding.

Sorry if this was not clear - for the record I absolutely do not think people who let their toddlers have dummies are doing it for bad reasons.

Thank you Zeph. I am 39 know there wil be no more bfing for me. I bf daughter longer than hubby wanted me to and "caught" me feeding her in the first few weeks after "we'd" agreed to stop and I guess I had those sneaky feeds with her because I was already nostalgic and sad for the end of our special relationship.
Maybe extended bfers make me jealous.
I don't know....

Jude68, We all do what we have to to remain sane whilst parenting. It sounds like you had an exhausting time with your DD1. Despite how near 'the brink' you were with you first child, you decided to go on to breastfeed your second as well, that is very courageous of you. Happily it sounds like you found a good feeding path for you and your DD2.

< I bf daughter longer than hubby wanted me to and "caught" me feeding her in the first few weeks after "we'd" agreed to stop and I guess I had those sneaky feeds with her because I was already nostalgic and sad for the end of our special relationship.>

I know mumsnet doesn't do it but I'm sending hugs your way. Our husbands really can not understand how our breastfeeding babies are tied together emotionally.

Plus hormones can go a bit haywire (apparently) when you stop breastfeeding, I have read on here that many mothers feel very sad when they stop nursing.

To clarify (am typing on the arm of a sofa), I bf dd1 and dd2 longer than my husband was happy with..although he strongly encouraged me to bf. He feels that 6 months is the end of the line.
I found it particularly hard with DD2 (who would take formula happliy) to be the one to decide, "right, that's it!"
Maybe part of me wishes we could have got to 12 months. My aim as unlike DD1 I didn't have to return to work.

ZephirineDrouhin, I'm sorry, I misunderstood your post about dummies;. It isn't also easy to read intent on the internet

Babieseverywhere, thank you and goodnight.

Goodnight

Bloody men. Feel a little angry on your behalf jude that your dh should feel he knew better than you about this. Drives me completely nuts anyway that we are made to feel like bad mothers if we don't bf for the first 6 months and like freaks of nature if we continue beyond week 26. Anyway it sounds like you've done a fab job with both of them. Am completely with you on newborn feeding too.

Babies - no was my fault - badly worded.

poor jude