My tongue hurts...

Today a friend took Jimmy and me to spend some time at the local gymnastics hall, that opens its door to young children and their carers for $5 (possibly per child, not sure). For an hour and a half the children can run around on the soft springy floors, bounce on trampolines, climb, tumble, and crawl around, and swim in the foam block pool (it probably has a technical name...). I left the camera at home because Jimmy has been a little clingy of late (molars are coming in... soo.... slowwly), and I wanted to just be there with him and our friends. We'll be heading back at some point, but what I want to share has less to do with Jimmy and more to do with an interaction I had with a woman there...

This woman is a grandmother of two boys. One is a little older than Jimmy, the other one is a mere 3 months old and was all the wide eyed, smiley, and chubby limbed. She was doing a pretty good job of keeping both of them happy.

There was a particularly squishy spot and she had tried to carry both boys across... but that wasn't happening, so she'd put down the little one (most children there were actually really good at the whole physical-awareness/not-running-over-little-ones thing). Jimmy headed over in that direction and was looking at the little one*, and she and I started talking.

The grandmother started telling me how her daughter had been able to take a long maternity leave, and was now managing to work 2 days at her workplace and do the rest at home...

So, my mind was reeling... "long maternity leave" and the baby is only 3 months old... "long..." but I had to remind myself that the US has really poor maternity leave, if it has any, and if it does, it wouldn't be paid.

And because of this long maternity leave the baby was "addicted to breast milk"...

I bit my tongue. ADDICTED TO BREAST MILK? AT 3 MONTHS? ARE YOU JOKING?!!! It's the ONLY food babies need at that age**!!

At 17 months, Jimmy could be considered to be addicted to breast milk, but he's still younger than the international average weaning age (WHO), so you know, whatevs, but 3 months? Addicted to breast milk? That's how it should be!

Oh...

It wasn't long before Jimmy and I moved away and on to the next thing. A little while later, Jimmy pointed to my chest requesting boobie. Yep. He's addicted to breast milk. I could have gone to our bag and given him a snack, but my milk producing breasts were right there.

...

I'm not judging this grandmother exclusively, I'm judging the mainstream attitudes to breastfeeding in the USA and the lack of support that is available for mothers to breastfeed their babies to 6 months, and even 12 months. There are states here where breastfeeding in public is not allowed or only when certain criteria are met. Even our GP here bemoans the low rates of breastfeeding in the US, and basically gave me a pat on the back for making it to 12 months, and I'm sure he thinks I'm an oddity, in that I'm still breastfeeding Jimmy.

Something very wrong took place in this country 20-30 years ago, and it's still going on, and it results in people thinking a 3 month old is addicted to its natural food source... And no, this grandmother wasn't joking because she went on to tell me how little he'd taken from the bottle and there was no humour in her tone.

I bit my tongue because I didn't want to create a scene, because I didn't know the whole story, because I'm a foreigner, and because I didn't want to be on the receiving end of a "well, what would you know?" tirade. Clearly the whole interaction still bothers me, because I'm writing about it.

I wish all mothers had access to 12 months maternity leave, good information regarding breastfeeding, and good support networks so that they can breastfeed (almost exclusively) to 6 months and for as long as they want afterwards. Is that too much to ask, or are my own choices and decisions affecting my perception of motherhood?

It's not always easy being a stay-at-home-mum. It's not always fun. Yet, I can do without the shiny things I might be able to buy if I happened to be doing paid work, because Jimmy is turning into a wonderful little person, even if he is a boobie monster who may never wean because he is addicted to breast milk, an addiction that started very young, and it's an addiction I am happy to accommodate (for now...). I wish others could be as happy as I am when babies are addicted to things that are good for them...

Yeah... my tongue hurts.


*It was actually a little crazy to see Jimmy with a 3 month old, because he's just so much bigger and yet he was that little once upon a time... Oh my heart...

**It is, but if you're reading this, and you have/have had issues with supply and are using/have used formula, please know that I would do the same if I had to.