How Long is Too Long?

The lovely Ruth Davies has also provided us with a guest post.  Here she talks about the difficulties experienced if you feed for too long....

After having what can only be described as a physical fight with my 2 ½ yr old daughter one morning this week I am beginning to wonder if I’ve breast fed her for just too long? 

I don’t mean we had fisticuffs or anything but I had to keep restraining her as she tried desperately to latch herself on. She’s strong both in her will and considering she’s little, her physic too; when I’m trying to feed my 8 week old son she can make it incredibly difficult for me to stop her. I often can’t move as have him one side and inevitably, if she fights hard enough and for long enough, I have to give in and let her feed the other side. We’d got it down to just one feed a day before my little boy was born but towards the end of my pregnancy and since she has been wanting ‘milk milk’ all the time. I’m a soft touch as it’s been hard for her having everything change, especially as I’m feeding him, so I’d started to give in and 5 weeks in, I’d got in a right pickle with it again; all the hard work of getting down to just one feed a day had been lost!

                           

Recently the topic of breast feeding older children has been significantly in the media due to that picture in ‘Time’ Magazine. If you haven’t seen it, it depicts a beautiful woman feeding her nearly 4 year old son who stands on a stool to reach her boob. Its provocative headline ‘Are you Mom enough’ looks everybody in the eye and says ‘I dare you to argue with me, I can do this if I want, I’m loudly and proudly breast feeding this child’. And that’s good. I think. For them anyway! I never in a million years thought I’d be the woman still breast feeding a child who can speak in sentences and I know exactly what the me from before children would have to say about it! But I’ve done everything the way I have with the very best of intentions, I never knew it would go on this long you see! 

If people want to breastfeed their older children then fine, I don’t care what anyone else does but it’s not for me – except it is me! I’ve been accused in the past of feeding her because I want to keep feeding her and not because it’s best for her. I can assure you it’s not that. I’ve wanted to stop for a good year now! I’ll admit when she was six months old and I thought stopping was just around the corner, I had a little sad feeling thinking our special time was about to come to an end. However, I have actively been trying to stop now for at least a year and believe you me; it’s not as easy as just saying no!

I wanted to do everything perfectly, be the perfect mummy and give her the very best of everything. I struggled to feed her in the first place, she didn’t latch properly and I got cracked nipples meaning we had to finger feed her for 2 weeks (she has always refused a bottle no matter how hard I’ve tried)! At the end of this fortnight I got mastitis and was very ill but eventually and with a lot of help from my midwife Suzan I got her latched and we have, quite literally, never looked back. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, everyone knows how hard it can be to start breast feeding but it’s never discussed how difficult stopping often is! 

Being this perfect Mummy I was adamant on lots of things. She would only have breast milk. Formula at any stage under a year was a complete no go and I was not going to be a failure at that task I’d set myself! And I wasn’t. But because she’d never take a bottle it meant only I could be the one to feed her. I expressed all the time and tried and tried but just as with cow’s milk and formula which we tried after her first birthday and still do try, she has never accepted milk in any cup or bottle and I’m sure we must have tried them all by now! It was binding because I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without her for a long time. She loved it which is brilliant, she got all that goodness from me and I’m so pleased but she doesn’t need that goodness now and yet still she won’t stop! As I said, she’s very wilful and does not forget things, she’s stayed away for 3 nights in a row but as soon as she sees me that’s what she wants and such a fuss ensues that it’s really never felt like a good time to put my foot down entirely. I wanted her to self wean, everyone said she would but they were wrong and now here I am not only feeding a giant child but doing something else I never would have wanted to do either; I’ve ended up being a tandem feeder as well! I really do try hard not to do it at the same time, I want to have that special time now with my baby boy but like I said it can be very difficult fighting her off; I hate to see her upset at the best of times so now, when her whole world has changed by having a new sibling, it feels especially harsh to fight her off but I can’t go on like this. I’ve managed through sheer force again to stop her all day and am only allowing it just after her bath of an evening but it’s really tough and she wants it constantly.

Even as I type I have her climbing on my lap with a ‘Mummy, can I have some milk milk, yes I can, YES I CAN Mummy!’ and it can often reach a screaming crescendo with one or both if us in tears. Sometimes she physically hurts me, grabbing, pushing and pulling and I know I’ve accidentally hurt her as I’ve pushed her away for the twentieth time so that she doesn’t squash the baby…This makes me feel terrible and ashamed in every way and I have to think where did I go wrong? What have I done within my perfect plan to be her perfect Mummy which means I am angry with her and she is angry with me because of the breast feeding? Did I feed her too long? Well I guess for me, yes but when would have been a good time to stop and how the hell would it have been done? 

It’s recommended to feed for a year but I didn’t want to abruptly stop on her birthday, I always want to have every aspect of my parenting to be as gentle as possible. 18 months and she was still going strong. I tried to cut down but she wouldn’t have any of it and because of her eating habits and slightness I didn’t want her to not have the milk. At two I was pregnant and things were changing, I didn’t want to rock the apple cart too much and she was slowing down. By two and  a half with a new baby in our lives it seems cruel to do it now when everything has changed so dramatically! So, in the last three weeks I’ve got it back to one feed a day, with lots of upset along the way which is not getting any less… and for the most part I don’t end up with one baby one side and another on the other but it does happen.

I just need that last push, someone to give me that perfect piece of advice which will help me get her to stop but until then, I’ve made my bed and am lying in it. I just hope when she’s nearly four like the child on the ‘Time’ magazine cover, we’re not still fighting about it then. She doesn’t mind her brother feeding, not at all, thank goodness. I don’t have that problem and while my son latches on perfectly he also takes a bottle of expressed milk with not even a grimace… I’m even, shock horror, considering a night time formula feed upon hearing a friend is doing the same and her 3 and a half week old is going through the night! I feel a bit guilty thinking I might do the same because it wouldn’t have been a consideration for my daughter and he’s such a good baby anyway with his sleeping but you know what, I kind of feel a bit more relaxed this time! I’ll feed him, just as with her, for as long as he needs it but I appreciate I was probably quite militant last time and I’m going to try and be a bit more relaxed with him.

I’ve learnt a lot during my breast feeding journey and I think the most important thing to remember is that as long as you are doing your best for your baby and thinking of your own needs (sanity with children is kind of handy) then they won’t miss out on anything. Even though I have a toddler still feeding I wouldn’t change a thing about the way I’ve done things because everything along the way worked for us at the time and she obviously still needs it for some reason, comfort is an important part of being her Mummy too! 

I love breast feeding, I am in the camp that breast is best and I’ve seen the stuff work wonders from clearing up a rash in hours to sustaining an otherwise poorly and refusing to eat baby. I wouldn’t judge you if it wasn’t for you; I just think it’s great if everyone tries their hardest to be the best parent they can and for me it was and is still, important to give my baby this magical time for the both of us. I definitely don’t want to be feeding another 2 and a half year old if he doesn’t need it and I WILL be having a break in between babies next time! Famous last words?