Originally posted by K-9 I think trying to help sales may have drawn them to create a little controversy.
I feel 10-12 months is the limit. When the child is over 1, starts to walk and talk, it creeps me out a bit. What's further creeped me out is that the article mentions how the mother on the cover also breastfeeds her 5 year old adopted son.
5 years old is a little old for me but why should it make any difference if her son is adopted or not when it comes to breast feeding? He's still her son. End of subject. Women have been feeding children not biologically their own for as long as there has been mothers. It's pretty routine actually for women who can't provide breast milk for some reason to purchase the services of a wet nurse for a time if the baby can't tolerate a substitute for some reason. When I was a baby actually my Mom's milk dried up shortly after she gave birth and didn't return. I couldn't do formulas, either soy or the milk based kind.
I'm intolerant of soy and I have severe problems with milk based products due to severe lactose intolerance. Lactose drops/tabs don't work very on me though I can drink 100% lactose reduced milk. As a baby this was a nightmare for my Mom. Trying to get me fed sans severe colic was almost impossible sans breast milk and she just didn't have any for me. My Mom ended up hiring a wet nurse she found through the hospital. I was by necessity weaned pretty early. It was too expensive to keep on doing it for any longer than strictly necessary, but no one thought it was an odd thing to do at all.
As an adult I knew a woman in NYC who made twice the milk her own baby could use. It's not uncommon at all. She sold her extra milk all the time rather than see it go to waste. Again, the Mom benefiting was very grateful for her services. I don't think breast feeding any child you raise whether biologically your own is weird. The moment you adopt and bring a child home it's 100% yours or should be. If it's still young enough that it needs to breast feed and you've still got milk? You just do it. That's all. That's just part of being a Mom. You don't differentiate between a baby born from your own body and one born from someone else. Not if you truly love your children equally and you should really. It's just not fair to look at one child as being somehow less worthy than another even with that. Start out doing that even over a small thing like breastfeeding, ignore one small child to breast feed another, and that child will likely unconsciously know all it's life that you didn't think it deserved to be treated exactly the same as your biological child. That is so NOT a good thing.
Besides which when you think about it? It's entirely likely that the adopted kid is the one who needs that moment, that nourishment even more. Being disconnected with your biological mother early on can mess with the subconscious.You can feel abandoned your whole life and never know why. That's not something you think about consciously but creating a maternal bond with an adopted child is all that more important because you have that disconnection happening early in life. If a child is young enough to breast feed, and you have the milk and can foster that connection by doing it for a while? I'm all for it. It will probably be enormously good for that child's development actually. There's nothing in your life experience that says "This is MOM." more than sucking at a boob and getting her milk. The hormones and so forth that are passed on in breast milk just serve to strengthen that connection all the more. If you can't you just can't, but it's always better if you can. That's a biological fact. Breast fed kids usually have better immune systems than non-breast fed kids. There's a reason women have boobs and breast milk and it's not just all about convenience.
Personally I think by the time a kid is 4 you should have it weaned. That's pre-school age and no kid should be still on a bottle or a boob by then. But I have known kids who stubbornly insist upon having a bottle and a blanky till around then so I don't suppose if they're boob kids it's all that much different in their minds really. Some kids can be awfully resistant actually even into pre-school about that. It's not till they see all the other kids going sans a bottle all day that they start to feel confident and fully disregard it. Most Moms will try to get them on a sippy cup of something else by then, juice or milk if they can tolerate it. But not all kids can go there as fast as others. It's kind of like potty training. Kids have their own schedule for that and no matter how much you try sometimes one kid will lag a bit behind another. I've actually known kids in nursery school who still wear pull ups in case of accidents. It's not that they don't use the bathroom like big kids most of the time it's just that they are not fully there yet for some reason.
I personally don't believe in making a toddler stop doing something too prematurely. Just because most kids do something fairly early doesn't mean most will. As much as I am a chatterbox now I barely spoke as a little girl and I was also incredibly picky about what I ate for a long time, probably because as a baby I associated anything but my bought bottles of breast milk with having a bad stomach. I was off the bottle by maybe 2 but that wasn't my choice. I can still remember being 3 or 4 and having a babysitter who wasn't too into listening to my Mom on certain things when she wasn't there insist I had to drink cow's milk every afternoon because her own kid did and because in her mind I was too small and not eating enough to get enough nutrients in.
She also made me sit there and eat everything on my plate whether I even liked it or whether my stomach could handle it or not. Or tried to. I can still remember sitting there all afternoon with my plate and a glass of milk in front of me not wanting to eat at all because I knew that if I did I spend the rest of the afternoon with stomach cramps in the bathroom. The woman meant well but back then most people just disregarded food intolerance as kids being too picky and while I could be usually there was a reason I tended to avoid some food or another. I had some major battles with her and my Mom actually over certain things even after my they knew better. Years later my Mom would still pack stuff into my lunch that would literally make me sick after eating it. Or make me sit there with a plate of something I didn't like for several meals. She had this idea that I'd just grow out of being picky and reacting to everything if she just kept trying, I guess. It didn't work actually. I still have major issues with certain foods, but it's not just because I don't like some things.
Every child is different. Some kids they get very independent very early, get weaned, potty trained and move on. Other kids they hold on to being a baby and a toddler with everything they've got. Unless I'm sitting there raising a child myself I'm not going to make a judgement call on all that. People do some weird shiz when it comes to their kids. They give them strange names. They make them eat their own strict diets. They do or don't encourage their kids to do certain things according to their own personal preference.They try to choose their children's likes and dislikes, even their friends. People can be downright nutty when it comes to their kids. Most of the time unless it involves something really harmful I'm not even going to attempt to second guess them.
My own parents messed up with me more than I can ever say and yet I'm still here. I survived all their dumb and often selfish mistakes.I lived through their crazy thinking, their backward attitudes, and I'd like to think I came out okay. It wasn't always easy though. They embarrassed the heck out of me, still do sometimes. They both at once smothered and controlled me and ignored me in some painful ways and in my mind they even physically and mentally abused me at times out of sheer ignorance. There were some things that they did that I have a real hard time with as an adult even just thinking about them. But that's with hindsight and a modern viewpoint. I know now what they did wrong. I didn't really as a kid. Back then I just knew I didn't like what they did, said sometimes, resented it.
But if I let myself get too wrapped up in all that? I'd be in a much worse place than I am now with them and I just don't want to be there. I've got maybe a decade left with my parents if I am lucky. They're really getting up there. I made the decision a while back to just live with their mistakes and to love them anyway. Doesn't mean I'd want to make them myself though. I tend to think I'd make a better parent in a lot of ways actually but I'm sure if I ever did have a child that child would have issues with my parenting at some point too.
The kid on Time? I'm sure he'll get his share of ribbing someday about that. But then again his connection to his "weird" Mom may be so strong that he might be able to just laugh it off too. His adopted brother? Probably won't have any doubts that his Mom loves him just as much. He might be a bit embarrassed by her openness but I bet he'll be a little proud of her too for being so brave and so loving and stepping up and being the best adopted parent she can be.
No matter how you feed your children (and yes I believe Dad should definitely get in there and participate with a breast milk bottle sometimes) mealtime is always an important part of making a personal, intimate connection with your children. Most basic instinct for most creatures? Food is survival. Food is love. In my mind it takes major dedication to breast feed a child till it's 2 let alone 4 or 5. You have to give up a lot of things to breast feed actually. Just eating some chocolate or drinking too much coffee can be trouble for a baby. I can't even imagine being willing to give that up for 5 years myself but if that's a woman's thing, her toddler still wants it, and she's willing to continue to do it for that long? Who am I to step between them? When a kid's half as tall as it's Mom, needs a book bag and a lunchbox and is heading off to nursery school then maybe I'll raise an eyebrow but until then I don't really think it's all that odd...