August 18, 2008
On Breastfeeding
I was watching an old episode of Sex in the City last night wherein the four ladies attended a baby shower in Connecticut, bitching and moaning the entire time. At one point, perpetually ornery Miranda made the following declaration on the topic of breastfeeding a toddler: “If they’re old enough to ask for it, they shouldn’t have it.”
Sounds reasonable enough. In our society, there’s no question that a lot of people find it creepy to see a woman with a suckling three-foot-tall child stretched across her lap. I’ve probably said the same thing myself, as have several of my friends, both those with and without children of their own.
But Donovan is 16 months old now, and still nursing once or twice a day. And he most certainly knows how to ask for, or rather, demand it. Once the 6 o’clock hour rolls around, watch out – I’m sure to be confronted with increasingly frustrated and desperate pleas for “muck, muck, muck!” And I’m prepared to keep going, possibly until 18 months, possibly longer.
I never expected to find myself in this situation. Breastfeeding was excruciating for the first couple months of Donovan’s life. He wasn’t latching on right and my nipples were ravaged. I eventually addressed the issue by using a nipple shield, an absolute lifesaver. (The reason it took so long for me to figure that one out is because several of the lactation consultants I spoke to discouraged the use of nipple shields because they said it could cause one’s milk supply to go down. This was complete bullshit – at least it was in my case – and I still consider this a pretty serious error on their part. But that’s a topic for another discussion.) I stopped needing the shield when Donovan was around six months old, and we’ve been going strong ever since.
Breastfeeding can no doubt be inconvenient when your baby is on the boob five to eight times a day. But I found that once I’d cut back to just two or three times a day after Donovan was a year old, it caused so little disruption to my routine that there was no need to wean him right away. I could pretty much always do it at home, as opposed to when we were out and about in the middle of the day (and thus run the risk of weirding out onlookers). It was reassuring to me to know that he was still getting all those nutrients and antibodies: I didn’t have to worry so much about making sure he ate perfectly balanced meals every single day, and I became less obsessed with germs because he didn’t get sick very often. Also, it was a special time that he and I had together, and it made him happy. Oh, and I love burning an extra 200 or so calories a day by just sitting on my ass.
So there you have it. Much like with many parenting issues that I had an opinion on before my son was born, I’ve changed my tune when it comes to breastfeeding. Consistency be damned.
