Every time a mum breastfeeds a toddler a stranger’s eye twitches, someone’s weird uncle says “can I have a go?” and the Daily Mail publishes a rage baiting article before someone called Janet from Doncaster comments “well I think that's disgusting”.
For there is no modern day act of motherhood quite as capable of making people lose their absolute shit as a child who can ask for a boob by name still being allowed to have one. And there is no modern day small talk quite as loaded as “oh… you’re still… feeding?”
Because just in case you’re new here, we are in fact living in the hellscape of everyone having an opinion on what you do with your own tits – and by extension – what kind of mother that makes you.
Welcome, friends. I’ve been here a while - pull up a chair, kettle’s on.
It may come as absolutely no surprise that I – a woman whose first article on this platform was essentially a love letter to extended breastfeeding and a gentle FU to Karen Millen after she went on national television and called it selfish, weird and abnormal – have now clocked over 3 years of providing on tap milk to a boy who I’m told “speaks very well actually”.
At the time, Karen’s comments sounded rather like she was saying breastfeeding beyond 6 months was selfish, weird and had no benefit - probably because she said:
“There's no benefit, is there, for a child to be breastfed beyond 6 months really. I think it's quite a selfish thing on the mother's part. It's just not normal is it? I find it very weird”
which, looking back, was perhaps an unfair assumption on my part.
Just because somebody says breastfeeding beyond 6 months is selfish, weird and has no benefit doesn’t necessarily mean they’re saying breastfeeding beyond 6 months is selfish, weird and has no benefit.
It might mean something else entirely, like
“As a woman to women, I respect your choices and I want to support you”
(unless of course you are specifically breastfeeding a 3 year old, in which case you are in fact selfish, not normal, and I find you very weird. Which is a completely different thing - like a bag that’s £49.99 instead of £50).
Anyway.
In honour of 1 year of writing here - and of becoming, right on schedule, the exact mother my muse was talking about all along - I have compiled a very serious and in no way defensive guide to breastfeeding a 3 year old.
3 things I’ve learnt, 3 things I love and 3 things I hate - plus a highly scientific rating of the comments I now hear on repeat.
Buckle up. It’s about to get edu-lactational.
I’m going to tell you something I’m not entirely proud of.
A few months ago I was scrolling - as one does, at an hour one shouldn’t - and came across a video of a woman breastfeeding her child. My first thought, before I could stop it, was that the child looked quite... old.
So I stalked her, obviously. To find out how old the child actually was. (This is probably why we shouldn’t share our children’s birthdays online. There are weirdos like me.) Anyway, it turned out her child was about 4 months older than mine. 4 months. Which means that at the point I was raising a silent eyebrow at her from my sofa, my own child was upstairs being practically the same age.
I’ve thought about this a lot since. How different a child looks when they aren’t yours. How size and age and what’s ‘normal’ all shift depending on whose baby you’re looking at. Your own child always looks like your baby. Someone else’s looks like they should be paying council tax and writing some lie dressed up as a business epiphany on LinkedIn.
We make a lot of confident parenting judgements from that position - from the outside, before you clock your own hypocrisy and you realise the child you just raised an eyebrow at is 4 months older than yours and you are, in fact, Janet from Doncaster in a dressing gown.
I was breastfed until I was 3.5. I know this because my mother has told me, with some pride, on multiple occasions. I have responded to this information over the years in the way any loving, open minded daughter would - by doing an impression of Bitty from Little Britain at her every time it came up.
For those unfamiliar, Bitty is a Little Britain sketch in which a fully grown man still breastfeeds from his mother. It is played entirely for horror. It was, I felt, a very apt reference. I was very funny about it. And now here I am - with a nearly 3.5 year old who breastfeeds.
You see, the thing about parenting is that it will find every single thing you said before you had children and it will make you eat it. Every judgment, every raised eyebrow, and every impression you did of your own mother at the dinner table. It will serve it back to you slowly, over several years, with a side of humility and absolutely fuck all mercy. You don’t get to have opinions about other people’s parenting until you’ve done it - and if you do, you’ll be humbled my friend.
Everyone who has ever said extended breastfeeding will create a rod for your back has been technically,correct. My son does ask for milk when he's tired. He asks for it when he's sad, when he's poorly, when he's bored, and when he's spotted me sitting down by myself and decided that’s not on. Stopping, when it happens, will require patience and consistency and at least one genuinely grim fortnight that I am in absolutely no hurry to begin.
But the thing about the rod warning is that it assumes rods are avoidable - they are not.
Children arrive and immediately begin creating them. The dummy is a rod, the bottle is a rod, the bedtime routine involving 17 books, 2 songs and a discussion about something absolutely batshit is a rod. The Spider Man cup is a rod and the blue bowl is a rod. The fact you’ve accidentally referred to a brioche as a “cake bun” once and now have to call it that until the end of time is a rod.
Parenting is essentially just acquiring rods and then slowly getting rid of them one at a time and the fact that something might be difficult to stop one day isn't usually a very good reason not to do it today. In fact, if we applied that logic consistently, we’d probably never have children in the first place because children themselves are, when you think about it, quite a significant rod for your back.
When your computer completely loses the plot, you don’t try to reason with it. You press 3 buttons and it resets. Normal service is resumed and everyone moves on.
Breastfeeding a toddler is exactly this. Whatever has broken - and something is often broken - the boob fixes it. It actually doesn’t matter what it is. I have never found a faster solution and for that I am indebted!
There’s mum guilt and then there’s mum guilt that descends the moment you put a screen on and sit down - a vague sense that you should be doing something more enriching. That somewhere a better mother is out there doing a craft activity or explaining photosynthesis.
I don’t actually know any of these parents in real life which I guess tells you everything you need to know about how much of parenting discourse exists entirely on the internet, populated entirely by people you will never meet, making you feel bad about things that nobody around you actually cares about. But still, there is guilt about what the screen is doing to his developing brain. The blue light. The passive consumption. THE ROT!
Breastfeeding while watching Bluey is my loophole. I am not letting him rot in front of a screen - I am providing him good shit while coincidentally also finding out whether Jack’s dad ever found his way through the Bush to pick him up. The milk cancels out the rot - it's science. I’m sorry, I don't make the rules.
I am an anxious mother. I know exactly how many wet nappies a toddler should have in a day, I know what the early signs of dehydration look like, I have Googled a lot of things and have arrived at conclusions that no person should ever arrive at about a child who was simply a bit warm.
I remember my friend messaging once in a panic because her child was poorly and refusing everything - the yoghurt, the fruit pouch, the ice cream, every suggestion a WhatsApp group of mothers could collectively produce to get the fluids in.
When my son is sick he will always have boob. Maybe it’s helping him. Maybe it’s helping me. Either way, when your child hasn’t eaten properly for 2 days and has decided water is beneath him, having one thing you know he’ll take feels a bit like carrying a spare parachute.
There is an entire canon of breastfeeding literature and not one person thought to mention that at some point your child’s hand will locate your other nipple and just stay there… forever. Fiddling absentmindedly - completely at peace while I am sat there with both tits fully out because he has one in his mouth and the other in his hand and if you’d told me before I had children that I would sit like this, regularly, in front of both of my parents, I would have told you to fuck right off.
Most of the time I can zone out. But there are times when the overstimulation is overwhelming and I want to rip my tits off and put them in the bin.
I grew this child. I have loved him since before he had a face. Sometimes I want nothing more than to sit on the sofa and just cuddle. Instead he spots me sitting down and says “MUMMY MILKKKKKKK”.
I know he loves me. He speaks, as we established earlier, very well actually and he tells me so. But mostly he tells me he would like mummy milk.
There is a certain type of person who upon learning you are still breastfeeding a 3 year old will make a series of rapid assumptions about you. That you are, in some way, a bit much. A bit intense. The kind of woman who has strong feelings about sourdough and owns too many linen items and as Katie Hopkins once said - makes her own yoghurt and knits her own Birkenstocks.
These people are exhausting. They are also completely irrelevant. Because once you’re 3 years in to breastfeeding a child you have long since run out of energy to care what anyone thinks about it. The fucks have left the building and you are untouchable (in the most physically touched way possible!)
Which brings me to perhaps the most predictable part of extended breastfeeding.
The comments.
Not loads of them, contrary to what the internet would have you believe. In over 3 years I’ve actually had remarkably few people say anything to my face. Most people are far too British for that. But every now and then someone does get brave. And what I’ve discovered is that, much like children, these comments are not nearly as unique as their owners think they are.
For there are only about 7 of them and they get passed around from person to person like a chain email your nan would have sent in 2004.
After 3 years I no longer take offence. In fact, I’ve decided to review them. Think of me as the Michelin Guide for unsolicited breastfeeding opinions. Here we go…
Rating: 7/10
A classic. One of the greats. A joke so old it’s probably carved in a cave somewhere. Points awarded for longevity. Points deducted for originality.
Rating: 10/10
Excellent observation. That is, in fact, what comfort is. A rare comment that accidentally answers itself before I’ve had chance to respond. No notes.
Rating: 5/10
The Ford Focus of breastfeeding comments. Dependable, common, seen absolutely everywhere. Gets the job done but nobody’s excited to see it. Bonus points for being delivered as though the speaker has just discovered a serious safeguarding concern rather than a child having a drink.
Rating: 8/10
A strong performer - consistently popular. Usually delivered with the same tone people use when asking when your kitchen extension will be finished. Points deducted because nobody ever seems to have a preferred answer. “Next week” causes alarm. “Not sure” causes alarm. “Tomorrow at 2:17pm” would probably also cause alarm.
Rating: 9/10
One of my favourites. You’ll never guess what I do while drinking a cup of tea.
Rating: 8/10
Strong energy. Often said by someone who has just watched him actively receive milk and happiness from it.
Rating: 6/10
Loses points for vagueness. What’s weird? The breastfeeding? The toddler? The milk? The concept of mammals? Needs more detail.
Rating: 10/10
An absolute giant of the genre. The Rod For Your Back has achieved almost mythical status in British parenting. There is no comment greater.
Rating: 7/10
Solid effort. Points awarded for imagery. Points deducted because if my 3 year old is still attached by his umbilical cord, breastfeeding is probably not the biggest issue on the table.
Rating: 9/10
Excellent. One of the few comments that genuinely fascinates me. Yes Sharron, the talking has made the process significantly more transparent.
Rating: 10/10
A modern classic. Usually asked by adults who require a cup of tea, a duvet, a hot bath, a group chat, antidepressants, a takeaway and 3 episodes of Netflix to regulate themselves after a mildly stressful Tuesday.
No further questions.
1 year ago Karen Millen inadvertently started this Substack. I wrote my first piece not entirely sure anyone would read it. They did. Thank you Karen, and thank you, lovely reader, for being here - I hope you stick around.
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