misplaced mama

I stumbled across this on You Tube.

That is one serious breastfeeder. Wow.  I am in awe, curious, intrigued about this extended of a breastfeeding relationship.  And in some ways, if I am to be truly honest with myself, I am a bit skeeved by it.  It horrifies me to admitt this, but it makes my belly do a weird turn.  This is not the person I think of myself as, this is especially not the person I want to admitt to being. I do not judge this family in the least, that is not it.  But when I put myself in the context of nursing a child of that size…I shudder.  It is not the primitive blood line in me that screams "no fucking way", it is the modern brainwashing that I have fallen victim to.  I know I feel this way because we just *don’t* nurse our children for that long in this culture.  I don’t know what this says about me, except that I am weak and impressionable and perhaps I ‘can’t be considered a "true" advocate of child-led weaning and extended breastfeeding.  Perhaps if I lived in a culture where the whole community was nursing well past 5 or 6 years old and kids nursed communily on other family and friends so mothers can have a break, then maybe I could see it….but I don’t and we don’t and it’s just not what my eyes see.  I don’t want to beat myself for being honest with myself, but then again I am a bit ashamed that I can’t look beyond the 4 year old mark of weaning (seems like an old age to most people, but I am part of mother community where that is and can be the norm).  Maybe Iif  personally knew someone who nursed their kid at 7, I could open my mind and play with the notion of allowing my child to nurse until then or longer…whenever they wanted to stop.  But perhaps I am way too selfish of my body and way too conditioned with western culture.  I only hope to work on myself more and learn to be more open.

That being said… 

Sula is almost two years old and it seems that her need to nurse just keeps getting stronger.  Every time I sit down for a moment to read, check my email, pay a bill, she’ll be there reaching up for me, "Mama, mama, night-nightsie, night-nightsie".  Her head cocked, a sillt smile on her face, her eyes glistening.  Most of the time I am game but lately it feels like my right boob is severly bruised from her pull and suck and it really hurts; her mouth is like a plunger. She calls the right one "Pink One" and the other one, "Big One".  At one point the left one used to be big, but now it’s just the saggy, rolled out, pathetic pancake one.  I have been avoiding nursing her in public, like today at the library she begged me and I explained we are at the library to read, when we get home we can do night-nights.  She got up, told Mia and I to "come on guys", walked over to the stroller, started to push it, and said "Sula go home now.  Night-nightsie."  It’s not that I care what other people think, I am just starting to feel annoyed with having her climb on me and pull at me and yank my shirt down while other people are around, like in the library at story time or in a restaurant.  It’s mostly because of the physical discomfort I get when we are not at home on the couch and a good position. It’s also pushing 105 degrees around these parks.  F-in Hot to be a host.  And maybe I am lying a little bit about not caring what people think.  I don’t like the looks I get.  Maybe I do feel weird when a man walks by and takes a peek, regardless if he wants to see some nipple or if he chooses to looks in disgust.  I get both those looks from men and women quite a bit in my bottle feeding ‘hood. I feel like I should be hiding the fact I nurse a 2 year old and that makes me really, really sad.  I mean, the mother in the video really is my hero…she nursed a 7 year old on BBC for goodness sake!  What a brave, unhindered soul yearning to change the way we looks at breasts and how we treat our children.  I admire that greatly.  I wish I could be as brave. After reading the comments regarding the video, it’s easy to see that literally nobody can see the truth in what she is doing.  These people are not perverts, these people just desire to honor their children and not hide the fact that they are children with strong bonding needs.

There is no such thing as "discreet" when a 2-year old is milking you.  And I question why I have to be discreet of course, I mean, plastic boobs run in herds around here and anywhere we look in this country, from magazines at grocers or billboards along the city highways— tits, ass, and the de-sensitization regarding the female body is in effect.  It’s okay for 8 year old girls** to prance around the mall in 6 inch long Von Dutch mini skirts and candy cane stripped tube tops before they have a make-over at Libby Lu (a.k.a. Make Me Look Like A Tiny Stipper), but it’s questionable whether it’s okay if I pull out my boob to settle down and feed my girl in the same mall. To feel this is so not like me.  I usually could give a damn, but when search down deep, I guess I do. Just as I was a bit grossed about the almost 8 year old nursing, I guess I don’t want anybody to look at me and feel the same way I did. What a hyporcrite I am.  Maybe it’s for the energy sake of my girls; I know they know when other people glance at us in less than approving ways.  I know Sula can feel me cringe when I sense a disapproving stare while they walk by and see her nursing in the Ergo while we grocery shop.  And maybe this happens with only 1 out of 20 people.  But it happens.  And those times it does happen sticks deeply in me.

I am not in any feeling like those are pressures to stop, not at all, but they are pressures that my raw human-side feels.  And I feel it silently from strangers as well as friends and family who I know think 2 is pushing it with breastfeeding.  I guess it makes me sad.  Sad that I look upon others that way.  Sad that I am looked upon that way.  Sad that this culture feels the need to hide precious events like birth and breastfeeding from the public…especially from our youth. 

And that being said…
 

Some days I am so ready to wean.  Just be done.  But some days I can’t even get over the gratefulness I feel when I look down and her big brown eye is looking up at me.  Pure love.  I will never feel good about those days when Mia was the exact same age as Sula, even younger, when I was at the end of my pregnancy and trying desperately to wean her.  Her need was so primal, her will was so strong, she made it clear she needed my flesh, that she needed my milk like a humming bird on a flower.  And though I tandemed nursed them both until Mia was 2 1/2 years old, I will admitt I resented nursing Mia at the very end of the pregnancy and especially those first few weeks with a newborn.  I did not want to do it, but I did. Now I look back and compare what Sula is going through and see that this cusp, this age from 1 to 2 years old is a serious transition: powerful and impressionable.  They are changing and growing in a fast way; becoming verbal commuinicators, mobile and agile, precise, imaginative.  They are becoming. Blooming.  And what could offer them better support than mama’s milk?  I wish i could go back and be more patient with Mia at that time.  She was so small.  I am so glad I did not force weaning with her, but I also wish I could have done it with a bit lighter heart, with deeper breathes, with more relaxed shoulders.  Which I try to do with Sula.  I don’t plan on letting relationship completely go anytime soon, but I must honor and validate the challanges of "extended" breastfeeding.  It can, at times at least, be a very tiring, hopeless road for me. I must be gentle with myself for feeling annoyed and invaded and sucked dry.  It’s okay to feel that way.  I guess it’s okay to feel all different kinds of ways.  As long as we are trying not to judge others or ourselves.  Who really cares.

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 **Something I am too tired to write about but needs to be thought about: Where I live, I am not lying when I say that 8 year olds prance around the local mall in scimpy clothes, made up, with cell phones glued to their ears.  And this sight very well might disturb me MUCH more than the almost 8 year old in the UK nursing.  Obviously 2 very different choices…but what is more "perverse"?  To nurse at that age or to exude a totally independent sexuality that resembles that of a 20 year old?