I had a secret… but the way my 3 year olds mouth is set up…
You know you get to that point in parenting when your child starts to just blurt out everything that’s going on in your life to anyone that will listen? Well I’m at that point, and my daughter who’s three and a half loves to chat! We’ve been keeping something pretty on the d-low after some public moments that made me a bit uncomfortable. But now she’s started to ask people randomly with no context “do you want to come to my milk ceremony?” they look at me blankly… then ask what’s a milk ceremony?
I feel the awkwardness come up as I explain, it goes something like this with no breaths in between… “she’s still breastfeeding and I thought we would have finished ages ago but we’ve not and I’ve tried to but it’s not working. So we are having a milk ceremony to stop feeding and there’s going to be chocolate cake”. I see the judgment and all the questions flash over their faces before they go “ah ok”. I get why people have been shocked to find out we are still breastfeeding, it’s not common practice to see toddlers and pre-schoolers breastfeed, and some of us are lucky to even see babies breastfeed. Only 0.5% of babies in the UK are breastfed after the age of 12 months, and I can’t find any data for after the age of 3 years in the UK, but I’m guessing it's low. Despite the global average being 2-4 years, and in some places 7 years of age that children stop breastfeeding.
Although my daughter tells me she never wants to stop feeding, she’s actually really excited about the chocolate cake, she also sees me practice ceremony and ritual in my day-to-day life so she’s excited about this being a ceremony - to make a flower crown, offer some of her milk to the earth and the moon, to walk from her last feed down an aisle of roses to a new spot (with cake). It feels important to mark the moment in such a way that honours our breastfeeding journey that was so difficult for the first 6 months with her tongue tie, the constant excruciating pain, and how much it impacted my mental wellbeing and postnatal depression. I was not prepared for any of what came up, so it was a pretty fast and deep initiation. Breastfeeding eventually turned into something so beautiful for us, so it surprised me when we were met with some challenges again.
The embarrassing public moments (yes there was several of these) of tandem feeding, for them both to unlatch at the exact same time leaving me fully exposed with milk dripping everywhere? Not exactly the postpartum look we’ve been shown.
The awkward positioning of a toddler and a new born, but we finally found what worked for us.
The arguments over which boob belonged to which child, the loving look, hand holding and bonding between them both at around 6 months which very quickly escalated to hair pulling and hitting (with love).
My toddler forgetting how to latch completely, using her teeth, and being milk obsessed (toddler latches can be so hard and fast) - even faking falling over for sympathy boob to make her feel better.
Despite being a huge breastfeeding advocate and a volunteer breastfeeding peer supporter at my local hospital the Leicester Royal Infirmary, I never thought I would be in this position, tandem feeding a new born and a toddler. I always thought I would breastfeed until one years old, and then that came around so fast and she seemed so little still and barely ate anything (hello fussy eater), and then two came and she was still so small and enjoyed her milk and then her brother was born and I felt so guilty cutting her off so abruptly and feeding him, and here we are a year later still tandem feeding!
BUT I started to dread the feeds, started to feel my body contract, started to feel my bones ache more, and feel constantly exhausted. I managed to get her feeds down to twice a day, a morning very brief feed but only after I’ve had some breakfast and a bedtime feed with a story, the end of the story indicates the end of feeding (of course she’s smart enough to pick a long enough story to feed to, and she speeds up her feeding when the stories almost over). Whilst I feel some guilt that she does not want to stop feeding, I know that I am ready to and I want to honour that boundary for my own body that’s feeling so depleted and exhausted and my own mental wellbeing.
I have questioned if it will feel sad moving into a new chapter, there is some anticipatory grief there. But I also trust that we have such a beautiful bond and I’ve learnt so many other ways to soothe her and connect with her that we will navigate as best we can. Lets keep talking about the biological norm for babies to feed past one, past two and even past three years of age, so hopefully the next generation won’t feel embarrassed if they continue to breastfeed past 12 months.
(I have used the term breastfeeding to reflect my own personal embodied experience and appreciate this will not reflect everyone’s experience)
