This is what extended breastfeeding looks like

Tagged with: baby, breastfeeding, mom

by Carolyn Robertson posted in Mom Stories

TIME magazine takes aim at a very hot topic this week: Attachment parenting.

“Are you mom enough?” asks the issue’s cover, which features Los Angeles mom Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her almost 4-year-old son.

Suckling from his perch on a chair and decked out in cool camouflage pants and running shoes, the preschooler probably isn’t what comes to mind when most of us think about nursing. And that was precisely the point, admits photographer Martin Schoeller. “When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids,” he says. “I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation.”

Here are a few of the other uncommon portraits of breastfeeding from the article:

Jamie Lynne Grumet with her 3-year-old son

Dionna Ford with her 4-year-old and 5-month-old kids

Jessica Cary with her 3-year-old daughter

Melinda Larsen with her kids, ages 6, 4, 2 1/2 and 9 months

So… are you shocked by these images? Repulsed? Inspired?

TIME is clearly trying to provoke, both with the photographs and the in-your-face headline. Try telling a mom that she’s somehow not “enough” and you’re sure to get a response. But let’s face it: Extended breastfeeding is a provocative subject. While these pictures don’t offend me, if I ran into Ms. Grumet breastfeeding her preschooler on the subway I’m pretty sure my jaw would drop at least a little (though I certainly wouldn’t threaten to call social services, which she says has happened in the past).

The article does give some insight into why these moms choose to keep on nursing their kids well beyond the point of walking and talking. For Ms. Grumet, who grew up in an AP family, there was never any question that she’d raise her sons the same way. Her own mom breastfed her until she was six years old and she still has clear memories of suckling: “It’s really warm. It’s like embracing your mother, like a hug,” she explains. “You feel comforted, nurtured and really, really loved. I had so much self-confidence as a child, and I know it’s from that. I never felt like she would ever leave me. I felt that security.”

Kansas City mom Dionna Ford, on the other hand, admits she fell into it accidentally, saying, “After six months, I decided I’d wait until he turned 1. But after my baby turned a year old, he was still a baby—not talking, barely walking—and I wondered why I’d stop now.”

Three years later and she’s still going strong.

What do you think of the photos? And how do you feel about extended breastfeeding?

Photos: TIME

Read more from source:“babycenter-com-baby”

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Jamie Lynne Grumet, Jamie Grumet, EXTENDED BREASTFEEDING, Jamie Lynn Grumet, Attachment parenting, breastfeeding older children, Dionna Ford, Lynne Grumet, Time extended breastfeeding, Jamie Lynne Grumet blog

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