breastfeeding a four year old

[bundleone]

breastfeeding is for babies , toddlers can use a spoon and schoolkids a knife and fork, this mother is doing her child no favours,

[China Doll]

Yeah? Great.

That instinct remaining well and truely burried

[legend758duo]

quick opinion.

freaky


no need

byeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Pippa68]

No worries CD.

If it does ever surface there are lots of great teats in shops nowadays!

[Goodsoulette]

I do wonder what people think is more unnatural.....

breastfeeding for more than 2 years or bottle feeding from birth? My nan, who is really old, says she remembers working in the fields as a young teenager, picking fruit and peas etc and women with children would be feeding their children as they worked, she reckons they did this up to the age of about 7. She had her children between the 1940 and 1960s and started off breastfeeding but then went to bottle.

Isn't it funny how the shift in what is normal has changed? Is it a combination of "EVIL" marketing tactics by baby formula companies or breasts natural function being completely disregarded and seen as solely sexual objects.

[Pippa68]

Do you know when attitudes shifted, Goodie?

I know that we have gone through cycles of breast, bottle, back to breast again..is breast 'in' again?

I know when I had my first baby in 1990 I was in the local NCT and the majority of us breastfed (well we would, wouldn't we? lol) we even had a counsellor on hand 24/7 in case we needed advice ~ however I couldn't see myself getting to the stage where I was so desperate to breastfeed that I would phone a counsellor at 3.00am, in floods of tears because my baby wouldn't latch on or I was in pain.

I always had bottles on standby if I needed them ~ and occasionally they were used.

When my mum had me in the late 60's it was basically taken as read that I would be bottlefed. My mum tried to breastfeed me..but not having the support, she gave up.

[LoftyLottie]

Each to his own. I personally find it disturbing to think of a four year old on the breast, but that's just me.

My friend breastfed her four year old on demand - I found it disturbing to see a child coming home from school and immediately running to Mum for breast milk.

[Goodsoulette]

Attitudes shifted when companies wanted to sell formula milk. Nestle's original idea was a fantastic one, it was when the guy was visiting orphanages in the late 19th century became determined to come up with a substitute milk to stop babies dying but then they started exporting to Africa and South America, and during the 1950s here it was marketed as a better substitute for your baby. It explains why you rarely see a picture of a baby nursing from their mother, no one is going to make any money from that and the longer a child breast feeds for the less likely it is that they will crave junk food. So I reckon the shift happened in the 50s and 60s but by the 70s Americans were trying to boycott Nestle products.

I really worry all this negative press regarding the "extreme" breastfeeding will shift us back to the 50s. If 50 percent of mothers over 50 percent of the work are still breastfeeding their children when they are 3 and this is recommended by just about every health organisation, why do we see it as so alien?

[LoftyLottie]

I find it just as disturbing seeing a four year old sucking on a feeding bottle, though.

[Pippa68]

I know about the milk products handed out in Africa ~ I remember the drive by the milk companies during the 70's and 80's as the under nourished mothers couldn't breastfeed successfully, however the water was so unsanitary the babies were dying anyway!

We should all know that a mother needs proper nutrition to breastfeed a baby..I remember being appalled that the milk companies were able to spend money promoting their product in countries where poor nutrition was rife due to to poverty.

[paulos66]

They still do it pippa more subtle these days though

[Pippa68]

I am sure they do ~ however as I am out of the breastfeeding game nowadays it isn't something I research now..

[bundleone]

I am not against breasfeeding babies, even in public if discreet, I have breastfed my four children up to 6 and 9 months,