So this baby breastfed for how long?
It's been four and a half, five years.
So by then she's quite large.
Mmm very large.
What do your friends and family say?
That she, really she should have stopped feeding by now but it had, I mean it wasn't a regular thing, it wasn't well, no tell a lie, it was regular but it was just at a particular time of day.
Such as?
I think it was just bedtime basically, it was just a night time, it really got down to that, to that point, but yes I mean it was, it was quite unusual, it wasn't something that any of not anything that our friends at the time had experienced or displayed and certainly none of the family to my knowledge had fed a child for that long.
What did you think of it?
I really wanted it to come to an end by that stage, I.
Because?
I think it was just a case that really it was time to move on, I felt that it was getting in the way of my daughter actually then moving on to the next stage of her life and to some degree it was, you know, getting in-between, not myself and my wife, but it was something that I think we just needed to move on from, rightly or wrongly. I did put a link between my daughter not being particularly settled or able to settle herself to go to sleep, she still needed this sort of contact with mum to go to sleep and she was still at that stage where she, you know, she couldn't really, settle herself and go and put herself to sleep. So of course it then meant things were very much more difficult for everybody really it couldn't, you know, we couldn't go out for example because, 'cause mum had to put her to bed, if she woke up she'd have to have mum there to put her back to sleep so it just made the whole experience of being a married couple more difficult I guess.
What did you do about that?
In the end it kind of, sort of developed, my wife fell pregnant for number two and that was pretty much it because I think then she being my wife, had actually then put a, the whole sort of situation into perspective whatever you want to call it and she decided that well, you know, I can't be feeding both of them when this baby comes then really I need to be feeding the baby and not and not the child, the five year old, or six as she almost was when the second baby came along. so it was much more of a conscious, a conscious effort at that stage that she'd that, you know, she tried to stop feeding, cut it out completely, and that's when it stopped [sighs].
Did you raise the issue of this long term feeding?
[Sighs].
Can you remember the responses you got, how a conversation like that might have gone?
We talked about it, I always take the approach that, you know, very much it's a biological thing and that, you know, there is there is a big emotional bond between mum and baby and I think that's probably more important than the yeah, you know the lifestyle issues that perhaps it was causing difficulty with, and when we discussed it wasn't particularly something, I'm not the kind of person that will say, “Look you've got to stop and, you know, this is what you do and you do it now” because, you know, there are obviously reasons for them for it continuing. So the conversations weren't particularly forceful if I remember rightly it was just something that we talked about and it came to it's natural conclusion as they say with [laughs] the second baby coming along and that was, that was sort of taking priority then.
At six she's old enough to remember…
[Hm].
…to be consciously aware of.
Yeah.
Did she ever verbalise that?
She does remember feeding.
What she say about it?
She just, I think, I mean she was aware that it was something unusual amongst her peer group and by this stage she was she was certainly at nursery school and had been for some time on a, admittedly only on a part-time basis but, you know, that was then unusual but it was only unusual insofar as other people weren't doing it, it was perfectly normal to her and us, so, you know, it wasn't really too much of an issue. But yes, she still remembers it now and it's something that she enjoyed and she does talk about, obviously she sees baby number three being fed and as I say she's she has good feelings about it and I'm pretty sure when the time comes that she has children herself she will breastfeed and absolutely certain, mind you she [laughs] probably would tell us that even now [laughs].
OK, so how long was he fed for?
Until baby [laughs] number three came along [laughs]. He was actually feeding a lot further into the pregnancy as well so he was still feeding whilst my wife was pregnant, so it was about four and a half years I guess.
You weren't concerned about that?
No, it became a bit of a joke by that stage again, you know, it was very occasionally and it was more of a comfort thing I mean obviously by that stage I don't think he was getting a great deal of sustenance you know, a feed as such because obviously he's well and truly eating as the rest of us are, with all his teeth and all the rest of it as well. So yes it was just more about comfort than a feed as such. |
