Having read the full judgement, this is an exceptional case that I feel puts the childs rights above those of a woman who has tried to manipulate everyone for a very long time.
I wish the same judgement was applied to the huge amount of fathers who terrorise their exes and are utterly incapable of putting their childs needs above their own vindictive agenda. It's not this judgement that is wrong, it is wrong that this is not applied across the board.
To clarify from what I read, the judgement was NOT about extended breast feeding or cosleeping, but about the way a parent manipulated everything and everyone to get what she wanted, and critically, she couldn't put her own childs needs above her own desires. It was that inability to prioritise her own childs wellbeing that the judgement was based on.
When you read the full judgement it's quite revealing, and shows a woman who has behaved very badly, and also lost main custody of her two older children, although the detail of that wasn't deemed relevant for this case, it does show that the situation isn't as straightforward as it seems.
Her strategies to further her case routinely involved sacrificing her child's needs, and it's just not ok to use medical appointments, gp & a&e to blatantly try and manipulate the situation.
Repeatedly she would lie about her childs health, or about what the doctors had said to stop contact.
She made all sorts of lurid and homophobic comments which were totally unsupported, and inconsistent in what she was accusing the father of. Things like 'gay people wear clothes that show pubic hair' and 'gay people are overly sexualised' etc etc. She even phoned up the fathers relatives to tell them he was gay, deliberately trying to cause a family rift. Not exactly the poor sweet victim!
She used social media to drum up support, demonise the gay father & publicize things that legally shouldn't be made public. She tried to get doctors & medics 'on her side' whilst claiming that contact had made her child ill - except it hadn't made the child ill at all, the child was perfectly well, didn't even have any symptoms being misattributed.
She tried to get 'expert' opinion submitted off people whose field of expertise was irrelevant to what they were saying. She kept changing 'facts' about the breast feeding situation and expressing to suit her case. She even tried to use cosleeping as a reason for refusing contact with the father.
Now, I breast fed until a year, and coslept for a lot longer (still am), and I fully support parents who want to do that for their child. But I do NOT like parents who use bf and cosleeping to block attachment! Although I ebf and Ds was like a little limpet for a super long time, that didn't stop him bonding with his father, or in fact his grand parents. His first night away from me was at 6 months, and he was absolutely fine, ended up snuggled with his grandpa instead of me, happy and content... whilst I howled like a baby in a 'romantic' hotel room a couple of miles away! And I was on the phone first thing begging them to bring him to the hotel as I needed to see him, but he was fine, I was fine, the milk supply was fine. And it got easier to spend little bits of time apart, which is just as it should be.
Ds had the most beautiful bond with his grandfather and went to stay lots with him, and I just expressed instead. His grandpa died in January and I'm very glad he had such a precious bond whilst he still could.
To deny Ds a relationship with his daddy and other relatives on the basis of his attachment to me - well, that would be bloody selfish and at the detriment of Ds wellbeing. The same applies here.