When I was pregnant, my partner and I listened to an audiobook on attachment parenting. It felt anti-feminist, even a little Handmaid’s Tale to me, recommending extended breastfeeding (12 months plus), baby-wearing (in slings), instant soothing (rather than sleep training) and co-sleeping (in the same bed). The creators believed that by satisfying a child’s every craving for closeness in the early years, you create a secure attachment with them, making them more independent and adventurous later in life. ‘We’re not doing any of that,’ I said to him. ‘I’ll want my body, bed and independence back.’ Yet, we’ve gone on to do all of that. Once my daughter arrived, my ideologies reassembled.
‘Follow your instincts,’ my family told me, and I did. There’s been no judgement from them, but elsewhere was a different story. I noticed the shift once I’d been breastfeeding for six months. It had just started feeling easy and, as if in a collective prank, people started asking when I was going to stop. ‘Why would I?’ I said. ‘We both love it.’ My daughter gazed at me while she fed, half- smiling, playing with my hair, the feelgood hormones softening the tiredness of a night’s sleep smashed into five pieces.
Besides, we’d been told in NCT classes that after six months of exclusive breastfeeding, the World Health Organization (WHO) and NHS advise mothers to carry on until age two and beyond. Alongside food. Why? Because not only does breast milk continue to foster a child’s nutritional needs, it’s also packed with antibodies that fight illness. So I have carried on... and on.
My daughter will be three in July and, whenever she asks for milk in front of others, I can see them fight to disguise their shock. ‘You’re not still...?’ people say. I stopped breastfeeding in public when she turned one. The clincher for me was when I overheard an elderly woman asking if she could move tables in a restaurant, given she could see me breastfeeding.
I believe this undercurrent of judgement exists because the two-years-plus recommendation hasn’t become common knowledge, therefore it’s not socially accepted. Like I once did, most Brits file extended breast- feeding under the ‘kooky codependent’ category. It lives in the same neighbour- hood as believing in orgasmic birth, placenta eating and having shared baths until your kid marries the nice person from the next commune over.
In Britain, only one in 200 mothers are breastfeeding by the time their child is one, making our rates the lowest in the world. I may be an outlier in the UK but, globally, I’m far from alone, with 45% of mothers continuing past age two.
I had my baby later than my friendship group. I was 42 and they’d mostly done it a decade earlier, and so the advice had changed. This often means the reactions to my choice to continue have been twofold. ‘As long as you know she doesn’t need it any more,’ is the first. I smile and nod, prefer- ring to be regarded as a weirdo rather than the smuggo who quotes the WHO to my friend who I know didn’t feed for longer than six months. Second up: ‘As long as you know it’s now for you, rather than her.’ Like I am getting illicit kicks from it. But they’ve accidentally hit on a valid point. It does do a lot for me. The oxytocin makes me feel more bonded to her. And the longer I continue, the lower my risk of certain cancers.
I was lucky in that breastfeeding worked out. I know plenty of people with other stories: premature babies who were too tiny to latch, milk never coming in properly, workplaces with nowhere to pump, savage mastitis, babies who became biters, others who lost interest. Or some women who simply chose not to, which is their preroga- tive to do as they wish with their bodies. There are endless reasons why breastfeeding doesn’t work, or needs to stop, or doesn’t happen – and they’re all perfectly valid. I encountered none of these obstacles.
Since she was one, I’ve reduced my breastfeeding down. ‘I’m just too lazy to stop,’ I tell some people, and I mean it. Having seen the one-man CBeebies show (shadow puppets! Songs! Hostage-negotia- tion!) my partner has to do at bedtime, it is irrefutably the easier option. Logistically, it doesn’t hobble my independence. There’s a misconception that you cannot be parted from your toddler. Yet I’ve done three- night work trips and even a week in Mexico without needing to pump. I assumed my milk would dry up in Mexico, but it didn’t. When I got back, she had a stomach bug, so it was a no-brainer to give her some of my antibodies. She’s only needed three days off nursery in the past nine months. And so I now intend to stop when she’s three, to help her through the petri dish of bugs.
It’s time for an inter-parent judgement amnesty. My toddler is no stranger to a chicken nugget or screen time. We all priori- tise different things. And isn’t all this hard enough, without us becoming the milk, screen time or childcare choices police? In the words of philosopher Nietzsche (who I only read the words of on Instagram), ‘You have your way, I have my way, and as for the right way, it does not exist.’