First I want to thank everyone who commented on Monday's post, "Unprepared." As many of you predicted, the lunch-time temper tantrum was an isolated incident. S happily nursed at lunch every other day last week, and two days he nursed himself to sleep. I placed my sleeping boy in his school crib, and he proceeded to take an hour and a half long nap both days. That makes me feel good because he rarely naps so long when his teachers rock him to sleep.
In a some what related topic, I've been asked by at least four people in the past week when I plan on weaning S. None of these people are good friends, none of them S's teachers, and none of them should really care how long I nurse my son. Why are people so fascinated with breastfeeding and pregnancy? Why do said people care so much what I do with my breasts?
4 comments:
I've been asked that a lot, too. It's clear that people think it odd that Supadiscobaby is still nursing at almost 14 months--but too bad for them. I'm sad that I have to wean at all (even though I don't really want to be nursing a 3, 4, or 5 year old). But I really treasure our time together, and I'll miss it terribly when it's over--so I'm in no hurry to end it.
Some of it, I think, is because people just don't know how to talk to pregnant/lactating women. Everyone thinks they know something about it, and they assume it's all you want to talk about/be asked about. Dumb, but there it is.
The other piece of it is, we don't get to own our bodies. Somehow our decisions get to be surveilled and judged by everyone else, and parts of our bodies that are doing a great job, functioning perfectly, and feeding another human being, are sexualized. People want to know when the boobs get to be the man's property again.
But I'm particularly annoyed about this now, because on Friday a female colleague interrupted what I was doing to tell me my laptop was too close to my belly and my baby would be hurt from the radioactivity. She went on about how dumb Americans are and how we don't take these things seriously. Grrrrrr... my PhD is in a field that suggests that I know significantly more about this than she does.
/rant (sorry!)
I don't find it weird that an 11-month-old or a 14-month-old are still nursing. I DO find it odd that people have the audacity to bring the subject of weaning up in casual conversation. Could you imagine, "So when is he going to take a cup instead of that bottle?" Well, actually, yes I can. And "when are you going to give up that pacifier" is another one I can imagine. *sigh* I'm guessing that the questioning was not neutral and conversational, but implied that the end should be near? I wonder if it's the breastfeeding that's the issue, or the "forcing the baby to grow up" issue. People have so many odd motivations. I guess I'm feeling strangely tolerant today, so I'm just lumping it in with general busybodiness. Should we expect people to be less willing to ask since the issue does deal with our bodies? If so, does that say something about not wanting to discuss issues related to the body? Hmmm...
I'm really lucky that not many people asked me that, since I did nurse for VERY VERY long both my sons (4 years for Kelvin -- 2.5 of those once a day only, though; 3 for Linton). When people look at a nursing baby (like a friend did to another friend's 8 month old baby last week) and ask quizzically "Is she still nursing?" I will confess I feel like smacking their faces. I feel like responding "Don't you know that research has shown that the longer a child is breastfed the higher his/her IQ would be?" "Don't you know that a mother's milk is the best nutrition for her child?" and things like that... I do feel very annoyed at how ignorant people are about the benefits of breastfeeding and how they view it as something almost "abnormal" and not natural as it should be.
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