Breastfeeding a two year old – is it controversial?

Ahhhhh other people telling women what they should and shouldn’t do with their bodies again. And heaven help us if a mother does what feels right for her and her child. 

Tamara Ecclestone has been defending herself after images of her breastfeeding her two year old child were shared.


Via Tamara Ecclestone Instagram 

The breastfeeding debate is ridiculous, it shouldn’t be a debate at all! Breast milk is the perfect food for babies and infants, it adapts to your child’s needs and it is awesome. 

Some people can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. They give their children formula milk which is the very next best thing. 

Some women feed for a few days, weeks or months, other for years. It’s really no one else’s business. Parents are just doing their best for their kids. 

This photo is beautiful and reminds me of religious art through the ages, the comments are disgusting and ignorant. 

The worst people for this are other women and I truly believe their defensiveness comes from fear. The scariest thing for a parent is to feel others are judging you and think you’re a bad mum. Mums face constant judgement on every aspect of parenting and it’s easy to feel you have to defend your way by attacking others. 

When I couldn’t breastfeed my daughter, seeing adverts telling me breast is best made me feel like they thought I didn’t want the best for my child. I felt the mums breastfeeding were eyeing my bottle of formula and thinking how shit a person I was. It made me so defensive. 

The reality was that those mums didn’t give a shit how I fed my daughter, they just were thinking of their own kids! 

When I breastfed my son for 10 months I felt judged for feeding him publicly, it was ok when he was a newborn but when he was a strapping kid turning his head, laughing and babbling to me, people liked it less. I was asked to feed him in the toilet, sent to bedrooms at parties, tutted at, laughed at and told that once they had teeth you should stop. 

We all need to be a lot kinder to each other, mums have gone through so much. 40 weeks of pregnancy where your body is changed beyond all recognition, birth (i.e. The act of removing a baby human from your body!!!) and then being responsible for another human being, often feeling that you lose your identity along the way. It’s hard work, man!!! 

So it’s easy to see how we get defensive when we feel attacked. We have created the worlds best child (yeah, we all think ours are the best!!!), we are exhausted, stressed, in love, overwhelmed and the most happy and tired we’ve ever been. So when we feel others think we’re doing it wrong, it hurts. And the easiest thing to do is to attack the opposite opinion. 

But it just becomes a vicious circle. From breastfeeding to weaning, stay at home mum to working mum, helicopter to free range… were pitting ourselves against the wrong people here! Mums need to join forces, whatever our parenting style, however we feed, play or work. We’re a vastly untapped powerhouse of humans! 

Being a mum is hard work and we need to look after each other more. We need to celebrate mothers more. We need to stop being arseholes to mums just trying to do their best. 

Sam xx 

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