I can't be the only one....

It started when my daughter was about 6 months old. It started out slow, and at first I thought that maybe I was imagining things. Then when she was 8 months old, the first real, undeniable comment happened, "oh, you're still breastfeeding?" Ummm...yeah? I don't understand how that could be a problem. Hmm, weird. Then as her first birthday got closer and closer, I noticed even more people were giving me a look, as if to say "Dear, you really ought to stop breastfeeding her. She's a big girl now, it's wrong". For a little bit I felt like I was the only one to think that it's ok, and normal to breastfeed past the year mark. Yes she was a big girl, but come on, she's not that big (right?!). I found some love and validation in the always right, always trusted Internet and forgot about those silly people. I knew that it was the best thing for her and we were going to keep going for as long as we could.

Then when I went back to work after my year off, I was talking to someone about my daughter and somehow it came up that I was still breastfeeding. "Oh!" she said, "what are you thinking?! You breastfeeding her is the reason that she's having trouble adjusting to you being back at work". It's true, M did not like me being back at work, however I doubt it would have been any different if I didn't still nurse her. I immediately blurted out "pffft, she's only just over a year old!" She went on to explain that she thinks that breastfeeding makes babies "clingy" and "too attached". Well, if that's true, then isn't that the way it's supposed to be? Babies are "clingy" for a reason: survival. Women aren't born with both the ability to produce milk and formula. We are meant to breastfeed, so yeah, I'm gonna breastfeed my child.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm going to breastfeed her until she's 8, but I see no harm in doing it past a year. The WHO recommends breastfeeding until age 2, not stopping once solids are introduced. Besides, there's no way M is ready to stop yet, so why make her if we don't have to. Oh, right cause I'll be raising a clingy, overly-attached child instead of a healthy child who is better at self-regulating and more confident than her bottle-fed peers. Right, silly me.