He's two and a half. It's funny I never thought I would, I never really thought how long I was going to feed for, I always knew I would plan to feed till about thirteen, fourteen months 'cause that's when my wonderful role models, my sister and my sister-in-law had fed till. And certainly until eighteen months, lots of my friends had fed fourteen, fifteen, sixteen months. I kind of always assumed I would be weaned by eighteen months, but hell we've waited this long [laughs] for it, and he gets so much comfort from it, and it's a special time, that I made a decision that I wanted to wean him naturally. I mean, there have been moments when it's caused issues and tensions with my whole family dynamic, and I've got to keep everyone happy, I want everyone to be happy in the family, I only feed him once a day now and he knows that, you know, if he asks me now I say, “Yes, yes in the morning”. So he knows and it kind of gives him comfort that he knows that there's a time, but I have to say it has been so wonderful, there was, when he was about eighteen months old he got very poorly and he needed to have an IV drip put in and I went to the hospital and the doctor was quite a young doctor and I said, “Do you mind if I feed him while they're putting in the line?”. And you could see the look he said, “Well what you could do is maybe feed him after to comfort him” and I said, “Well [pause] okay I understand your idea”. I mean basically he was thinking that he might associate my breast with the pain but he was too smart for that, I think also maybe he didn't want me in the room while he was putting a line in, but my feisty eighteen month old was feeding from me and hardly flinched while that needle went in, and I know that he would have been hysterical and they would have to pin him down if I hadn't been feeding him at that time. So there's been definite moments, and also there's, there's been points where he's had really nasty tummy bugs and he hasn't been able to tolerate anything apart from my milk. And also when we've been travelling it's been great, we went to South Africa, my husband was lecturing out there, and we went on holiday and a magical moment for me was feeding on the top of Table Mountain. We were there it was actually Valentines Day, a year ago, and people were walking by, most people didn't notice at all 'cause you can't even see what's happening, but there I was sort of me attaining my dream and it's very much led by [2nd son], if he hadn't wanted to do it I would have completely understood, like [1st son] didn't want to, it didn't work for him, but for [2nd son] it's been really important. |
