This will probably horrify you but my daughter is 10 months old and I’m still breastfeeding her. In many respects this horrifies me as well. She has teeth and she’s not afraid to use them. There’s a special little look that she gets, a flash of pure mischievous evil, and you know she knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s a chip off the old block. Fortunately for me she doesn’t need much milk any more but I’m sure you’re wondering why on earth I put myself through it when I really don’t like doing it. No, I’m not one of “those” mothers. The answer is simple, it’s free and this time around I’ve actually been able to do it.
There’s a great deal of advice out there for pregnant women and new mothers. All of it seems very bossy and patronising and most of it revolves around breastfeeding. It seems that if you want your child to be intelligent and healthy you MUST breastfeed them until they’re 25. If you want them to be sickly and a dunce then by all means give them formula milk but it will be all your fault. And if you want to lose the baby weight quicker breastfeeding will help you with that. Rubbish. It’s a cunning piece of propaganda but I can absolutely assure you that’s not true.
When I had number 1 son almost 12 years ago the guidelines were very different. They recommended breastfeeding until 6 weeks. When I had number 2 son 2 years later they’d upped it to 3 months. For some reason it really didn’t work for me, I tried my hardest but they ended up on formula milk so I didn’t have to get up hourly to feed them. But the guilt! Instead of supporting mothers who can’t (or won’t) feed their babies themselves the “healthcare professionals” that I came into contact with at the time dished out disapproval and made me feel like a terrible mother who had failed her children. And yet my boys are both bright children who are rarely ill. I very much doubt that this attitude to formula feeding has changed, I know of people who have struggled with it in recent years and have been made to feel bad by the breastfeeding Nazis. Just because it worked for them doesn’t mean it works for everyone. Surely it’s far better to be comfortable in what you’re doing rather than worrying about it?
It’s not just the professionals that lay on the guilt trips, though. Other mothers are quite possibly the worst offenders. There are people in the world who have a baby and become self-proclaimed experts on all things to do with children. This really annoys me. Maybe I’m being unfair but they strike me as the kind of people whose weeks are filled with endless baby related activities, storytime on Monday, music and movement on Tuesday, Mother and Baby group on Wednesday, baby swimming on Thursday (ok, I hold my hands up to that one but I’ve explained my reasoning here) and why not a bit of baby signing on Friday? Baby signing? WTF?
Having a baby appears to remove these people’s identities, their whole lives now revolve around their little poo machine and everything becomes a competition. “Really? Your baby is 7 months and still isn’t sitting up? Well, little Johnny has been doing that since he was 5 months old. And 2 days later he started walking. And he can already recite the alphabet backwards. And he’s just started reading War and Peace.” Bully for him. They don’t leave it that either, they like to inflict their advice on you too. Things like “I can’t believe you’re giving your child a dummy, they’ll get buck teeth”. Really nice supportive words. Number 1 son had a dummy and his teeth are fine. It was a struggle to get rid of it, but he finally gave it up last year. Only joking, and I suspect he may beat me up for that…
I like to think that my friends with children and I are normal, we are still us, we still like doing things for ourselves and if we go into a shop we’ll look at the high-heeled “bedroom” shoes first, long before we look at kids clothes or toys. OK, so I do have rather a lot of pictures of my daughter on facebook but that’s mainly because my sister paps her all the time. And if I do ever start to show tendencies of becoming one of “those” mothers I’m lucky enough to have at least one friend who will be completely honest and point it out to me.
So I will continue to breastfeed my daughter until she is a year old when she can have cows’ milk. And then I will be free, at least until I pop out number 4…
4! are you mad?
Probably.
Oh, the dreaded Competitive Mum Squad! They drive me mad – not least because they are clearly HUGELY insecure and the only way they can make themselves feel better is to make YOU feel worse. Ratbags!
When my son was 9 months old we had a Dr’s appointment and while sitting in the waiting room a mum with a baby the same age made a big deal about the fact that he wasn’t crawling yet. She even went as far as to suggest that I ask the Doctor to check if there was anything wrong with his legs! (At which point, I employed superhuman powers of restraint and did NOT smack her inthe chops). But, as they say, revenge is a dish best served cold – so it was sweet when we saw each other the next month and my little darling was up and walking (never even bothered to crawl – skipped that stage entirely) while hers was still on hands and knees.
There are the others who criticised me for bringing him up wsith two languages (I’m British, his Dad’s Greek, we live in Athens, so isn’t is natural?) because I would delay his verbal development (utter b*****ks, I might add). And yet these were the same parents who had thier poor little sprogs booked up to the eyeballs by the time they were two, with piano lessons, ballet classes, French, and baby gymnastics.
Poor little sods had to start over-acheiving before they can talk for fear of letting Mummy down (Mummy, of course, being in a state of permanent panic – and on a constant diet – for fear of being found anything less than perfect).
The truth – thank goodness – is that there is more than one right answer. What’s good for one kid, is not right for another. Every child does things in their own good time – and every adult does what feels right for their children. Our instincts are usually a good guide. Sometimes we screw up, but that’s OK. Proves we’re human. And it probably won’t permanently traumatise our little darlings.
So, do what you feel is right (which you obviously are) and forget about the ranks of insecure perfect self-named Yummy Mummies (I REALLY hate that expression).
And while we’re at it, what the bleedin’ blazed is ‘baby signing’???
I got this from the “Tiny Talk” website. Whatever next?
Baby Signing – our classes can give your baby
a developmental head-start
Baby SigningBaby signing helps them learn to communicate before they can talk
Baby signing – in TinyTalk classes – teaches Baby sign language – a form of pre-verbal communication. Babies understand so much before they can talk!
From as early as 6 to 9 months old, babies can begin to tell you what they want, what they are thinking about and how they feel.
No longer do you have to ‘guess’ the cry! (Tired? Hungry? Hot? Cold? Damp nappy? Aargh!) My own son reminded me, by baby signing, that I had not given him his morning milk thank you very much!
Signing babies can also tell you so much more than just these basic needs. For example, they can tell you that they have seen a ‘duck’ in the park or that they are excited that it is ‘bath’ time!
Babies’ control of their hands develops long before their control of their vocal cords and co-ordination of the movement of lips, tongue and teeth to make understood speech sounds as recognised words (often as late as 18 months).
Baby Signing Baby signing bridges this very wide gap aiding communication, giving them a means to begin to understand everything! Early language development and understanding also encourages early speech as the signs are always said at the same time. Babies’ initial words will be inaccurate but will develop with maturity. Baby signing also strengthens the child-parent/carer understanding and bond. And baby signing also reduces frustration, boosts self-esteem and self-confidence: in short making for very happy parents and carers and even happier babies!
But I would have thought that the danger of baby signing could possibly delay their verbal development – shock, horror!!
Amazingly enough, in the 60s, 70s & 80s, when most of the current generation of parents were born, there were none of these new-fangled things, and we still managed to survive long enough to procreate.
Kids are resilient little things, after all (except in the tragic cases when they are terrifyingly fragile). In many cases, they even bounce – I know I did.
Good blog item and one close to my heart at the mo !
The baby signing thing reminds me of Meet the Fockers – hilarious. – “Asss….hooooooooole”
Don’t get me started on the “guilt trip about BF that the health workers lay on you” – feeling that one at the mo !
I haven’t even had my (first) baby yet and am already aware of the Competative nature of these freakish mothers who, as you point out, have no discernable life of their own, they use their children as measures of their own success or status in the world – how sad.
They are on the Forums, in the playgrounds and lurking round every corner ready to justify their own skewed moral stance and lack of personaality by making you feel bad about a choice you have made for yourself or your baby especially when it comes to buying impractical brand name items so they can laud it over you and feel superior.
Sod ‘em.
I have never bought into this peer pressure bullshit for ANYTHING and am not about to start now I have a small person to consider in my life.