So is it just me who has viscerally negative reactions to talk about breastfeeding 4 or 5 year olds

[TwigorTreat]

Now look I know its different strokes for different folks and I am not judging anyone as I know logically that its fine and anyone who does is doing what they deem their very best for their own children.

But I am talking about a experiencing a sense of distaste that I cannot help. I do have a negative and almost physical reaction to the thought of breastfeeding my 3 year old let alone an older child. And I have discussed this before when it came to extending breastfeeding for my own child beyond 6 months and with the discussion was capable of making it past that psychological barrier to 11 months.

Perhaps the thought of having a reasonable discussion over this particular reaction is just a step too far for us on Mumsnet. But I thought I'd give it a go anyway .. what, with it being Saturday and all that.

Anyone who experiences the same sense of negativity will no doubt need to gulp down hard before adding to this discussion. Just as anyone who is on the 'other side of the fence' will need to take copious amounts of oxygen into their system to calm down before posting .. I hope both sides do though... it could be interesting and educational

"some of our feeds are at 7.00am, it's just the 2 of us, it's warm and cuddly and basically all about love"

Really lovely post

That is sad boco. You should move to Brighton. It is compulsory to bf toddlers in Brighton - you get handed one as you arrive. Seriously, I think that this is one of the reasons I am intensely relaxed about feeding my nearly-three-year-old in public.

I actually feel quite sad for the mums who have stopped doing bfing in public only because of other peoples reactions.

Imagine the outrage if bfing mothers of smaller babies were driven indoors like this.

I think mums generally get ragged on whatever they do. If your child is noisy, you are not 'teaching them manners', if they are quiet you are not 'teaching them confidence' and if you are breastfeeding them you are somehow 'indulging' them when they 'don't need it'.

Surely mums need to stick together more than beat each other up with the communal brickbats?

Really? I live in a small village. Not many bf at all, 2 friends have fed past 6 months, that's it. I got lots of comments feeding her at toddler groups at 6 months, i just wouldn't do it now.

My step mother actually used the word 'disgusting' to describe me feeding dd at 18 months. My mum thinks i'm doing it 'for myself', my cousin pointed out that there was obviously no milk after so long so why did i let her suck an empty breast, i've had 'bitty' mentioned countless times, one of my oldest friends pulled a yuck face and said 'don't you think she's a bit old for that!'.

I really don't think that the disgusted people realise the effect of their disgust and that sometimes it is upsetting to hear. I don't expect everyone to feel like it's right for them, but it'd be nice if they would understand that their opinions can be hurtful.

boco, that sounds awful, poor you
i can empathise tho i fed ds til he was 2 (stopped when i got preg with dd) and i got comments all the time about it, most of which were negative (incl from my hv and gp ) i did have one lovely comment from an elderly lady who said it was lovely to see and not enough people do it nowadays

i will feed dd til she wants to stop and am a lot more confident about it than i was with ds, so i will prob give as good as i get this time!

Agree also with those who said about a thread about gay people etc. Yet I expect it causes similar feelings of disgust for many people but those feelings of course say more about those who feel that way..

Boco - I also live in a small village and know exactly what you mean. I also have my mum making comments like 'you're going to be feeding her for a long time' (meaning she'll never give up unless you say no to her).

It is hurtful, but I pity people who haven't had this experience and are judgemental.

Wow boco, how awful. I don't blame you for keeping it private. I have only ever had one negative comment - another 'bitty', and given that it was from a teenager drinking WKD at the top of a children's slide when he should have been at school, I decided it would be a waste of calories to respond. OTOH, so many times I have been approached by women who say 'Oh, I'm still feeding mine but only at home', or 'I fed mine until he was... '. I like to think that I have a galvanizing effect (as well as making a lot of people feel sick to their stomachs, of course).

My mum was v supportive regarding b/feeding. In all respects.

She couldnt b/feed my older brother. Said her milk didnt come in....but she b/fed the rest of us. My youngest brother she b/fed till he was 15 months old and that was really something in the 1980's apparently. She came up against quite a bit of criticism for it too. I'd copy her and go off and b/feed my dolls.

Towards the end with DS, she did mention quite a bit about him "not getting much", and questionning whether or not I was tied to him etc, but I think that was more about the misconceptions fed to her, and her possibly projecting how she felt about weaning my youngest brother more than anything else.

Her mother was not particularly pro-b/feeding IIRC.

What actually is the definition of extended breast feeding in England? I know no one would look twice here in Oz if you were b/f a 2 yr old and in Papua New Guinea and all the other South Pacific Islands around here it's also totally normal.
I am amazed people feeding small babies (under 18m) say they had negative reactions in public. I think that is weird.

I should point out I was only 7 when I pretended to b/feed my dolls

I didn't know that about Australia tilbatilba. How civilized.

(Check out my use of 'z' spellings on this thread!)

Sorry, cross-fertilized from the grammar minutia thread.

Have read some, but not all, of thread. Don't really need to post, as harpsi has said pretty much everything I would like to have said, only better than I ever would have.

Before I had children I probably did think it was a bit weird to feed a young child (not that it was something I ever would have given much thought to), but now it seems perfectly natural, and I want to thank all the other extended bf'ers on MN for (directly or indirectly) giving me the encouragement and support to carry on.

that's interesting tipex, a friens of mine works with teenage perents and the overwhelming response is that they would have tried breastfeeding their babies if they had been girls, but couldn't entertain the thought of feeding boys as it was too wierd (sexual i presume). it really shocked me when i heard that, and made me feel very sad for those little boys too.

DD1 stopped her game of PowerRangers with her cousin to bf her Baby Annabel in a pub garden the other week

Read thw first quarter of the thread and skim read the rest.

I am as non-lentil-weaver-y as they come and I am still bf ds2 ( who is......counts fingers....2 years 8 months). It just kind of happened and is no different (apart from the acrobatics) from feeding him at 20 minutes old.

He doesn't run and pull at my top in the supermarket. He has a little snuggly feed before bed.

I thought I wanted to stop a few weeks back. But ds2 decided he didn't want to so here we still are.

People have stopped asking me the whole 'when will you stop' question. I bored them with the 'at some point before he goes to university' answer.

I can in some ways understand some of Twig's points in the OP - thinking of bf your own 3 year old who has not been bf for years must be weird. In fact, I think of my ds1 at the age at which ds2 is now (ds1 was BF only until around 3 months) and it feels odd to think of BF at the same age. But it is just a continuum - no different now with ds2 to how it was when he was tiny.

apologies for the stream of consciousness posting.....

Not sure what to conclude

what harpsi said.

with the addition that I believe that the roots of sexuality do lie in infancy, that in fact there is a link between the erotic and that first mother child relationship.

that (hopefully) skin on skin, sensual, intimate time, is intricately bound up with how we perceive ourselves, our bodies and how we attach at the most basic level so of course the two are linked.

there is absolutely nothing perverse in that, the innocence of that early relationship should be sacrosanct. in my view sensuality and innocence are not mutually exclusive.

But at the end of the day, isn't it up to each mother-infant pair to decide what is best without the influence of others being judgemental?

Bearing in mind that in the 3rd world, breastfeeding a child would probably last only a few years before the next baby came along and the older would wean him/herself.

So arguably BFing 9 year old has more to do with the mother's psyche than the nutritional and emotional needs of the child?

Depends on how you define normal-and normal for a western society is not necessaruly normal in, say, Malawi.

I've got halfway through this thread, well, barely halfway and I want to sob.

Put my head in my hands and sob.

Big, heaving, retchy sobs.

All the time, all the sodding time, the careful building of confidence, the knowledge, the support - and you have torn it apart with this thread. I am beyond livid.

For whatever reason this thread was started, Twig, you're an intelligent woman. I wish you had THOUGHT about the effect it would have, the posts from women saying it was "creepy", the ones from those saying it's "just for the mum" as if she's some sick sex abuser.

I am incandescent with rage, as anybody who supports and understands the fragile decision to breastfeed, the "choice" that's so often snatched cruelly away from women by ill-informed ignorance such as a lot of this thread displays in spades. I believe we all have a responsibility to other women, other mums, to support them to feel the best way they can about the way they feed their babies and this thread is disrespectful and damaging in the extreme.