Just this morning, I found myself in an interesting position. It’s one that I don’t have a lot of experience with, but that has certainly been more frequent since I had children: being on the receiving end of judgement.
This particular judgement was of the fact that I still breastfeed the Hutchlings at 18 months old. It’s generally only once a day, after their bath in the evening, unless they are sick or on an airplane or in some equally traumatizing place. N, in particular, is a boob-monster. I’m pretty sure he would like nothing better than to sleep all night, every night, while nursing. We never did the family-bed thing, mostly for the logistical factors that come with twins, so it’s not like he ever had the opportunity.
Curiously, I have found that this particular judgment has only ever come from people who are a generation older than me. It has even come from within my own family. The person who said this to me today did so, I believe, with the best of intentions. She is of the mind that weaning the Hutchlings will make them more independent. I agree that independence can and should be encouraged at this age, but I’m not convinced that denying them the breast will accomplish it.
We all know that breastfeeding saves money over formula feeding. When the Hutchlings first came home from the NICU, my nurse and lactation consultant told my husband that at the end of their first year, he was to take me on a week-long holiday to a very expensive resort on the coast. She claimed I would have saved us about $6000 by breastfeeding twins that long. I have no idea if that figure is accurate. I will say though that I ate so much more in those early days when I was a milk-machine that I may have eroded a good portion of those savings with a higher grocery bill. Who knows?
We also all know that many women who formula feed don’t do so by choice. I want to be clear that I was very lucky in that I had professional help in the form of a lactation consultant, and with that help I was able to produce enough milk for both the Hutchlings, and then some. Learning to breastfeed two premature infants was not easy though. Many people in those early days expressed surprise that I was doing it. I’m not sure if it was because I was physiologically able to, or that I was choosing to. I guess I could have given up but honestly, the thought never crossed my mind. In some ways it may have been easier, but in many ways it wouldn’t have. The thought of washing all those bottles alone would have made it out of the question for me.
So, in answer to the comment from this morning: I’m not going to stop breastfeeding. I can’t see any good reason to. Heck, if it replaced one cup of cow’s milk, I saved $0.31 today.
*Where we live, 4 litres of cow’s milk is $5. 250ml per day is $0.3125, or $9.375 per month.
No comments:
Post a Comment