I Nursed a Baby Cow!

Ok, so technically, it was a stuffed cow and I only nursed it at the behest of my son (who insisted he had to share the same boob with said cow), but the moment was no less ironic for me.

What made this moment especially sweet was that no mama cow has ever given her milk to my baby boy. It's not because I'm anti-cow milk. (In fact, I was raised on it my entire life from birth onward. ) It's because my son has had a milk allergy from birth so profound that I have been eating completely dairy free to keep my breast milk safe for him from the time he was less than a month old forward.

When I first shared news of my son's allergy with people almost everyone had the same question. "Do you think the allergy will go away? What will you do when he gets to be a year old or older? What will you give him to drink? Toddlers and kids need milk to grow, you know." I would always answer sheepishly, "I suppose I'll have to continue nursing him." You'd think I had announced that I was going to become a topless dancer from the looks of shock I sometimes got out of people. Even though Vermont, the state I currently live in, has one of the highest rates of extended breastfeeding in the country, it's still not considered completely "normal." "You'll nurse him until he's eight! You'll be one of THOSE mothers!" a friend teasingly predicted. A part of me was worried, too, not because I actually thought I'd be nursing him until he turned eight, but because I was afraid of being abnormal or weird.

Well, here I am with a baby who's a year and a half old and I'm still nursing and, to me, it is completely normal. Perhaps even more normal than it would be if the milk he were getting was in a sippy cup and came to him through some mama cow's boob instead of my own. It turned out that my breast milk has all he needs in just the right amounts and he is thriving despite having multiple food intolerances. Although, if you really think about it, that should be no surprise . . . after all, humans began making breast milk for other humans long before cows were domesticated! Don't get me wrong, I don't think giving your kids milk is evil or wrong or anything like that. I just want to point out that the milk toddlers are actually designed to need is human milk and that cow's milk (or goat's milk, or soy milk, or almond milk) is actually the socially acceptable substitute we've decided it's more appropriate to give them.

Every time I open most magazines, I feel inundated with ads extolling the virtues of "graduated" formulas or the necessity of having your kids drink milk, but what is missing is the admission that while it is good and natural for mammals like us to drink milk (after all, we get the name "mammal" from our attractive lactating mammaries), we are genetically designed to benefit most from the milk of our own species. (No offense to mama cow whose milk makes darn fine ice cream and other yummy treats!) In fact, if you think about it, it is downright weird that we don't encourage women to breastfeed longer considering all the benefits of breast milk past early infancy. Breast milk is magical stuff! It does not cause tooth decay. It contains nearly every nutrient the human body needs. It even might prevent cancer! (Just check out the links on the bottom for more information on the nutrition of extended nursing.)

I think the biggest scam ever perpetrated on our society was the one that worked to convince new mothers that their breast milk wasn't good enough and that formula was somehow better. The only thing that wasn't good enough about the breast milk was that it was free and no profit could be made from it. Greedy manufacturers made money on what is a potentially a life-saving product (formula) for people who really can't nurse by selling it to people who can but think that their milk is somehow inferior or that nursing is somehow "dirty" or socially unacceptable. I am convinced that if breast milk became known as "Super Milk" and came from an animal or a plant that could be mass produced and sold at a high value and not from our own sexy boobies for free, there would be an agricultural revolution like the world has never seen! People would buy it in gallons for everyone and no one would ever eat cow's milk ice cream or cheese again! Poor mama cow would end up nursing only her babies instead of feeding the world because "Super Milk" would corner the market!

So, does that mean that I really do plan on nursing my son until he is eight? No. But it does mean that if we all think about this logically, we should be content to breastfeed for as long as we are content to hand our children glasses of cow's milk. After all, human milk is actually designed for them. Does that mean that I am immune to the societal discomfort about extended nursing? No, in fact, I'm actually sort of hoping that he will wean himself sometime around two with little or no help from me before people really start treating it as awkward. (I'm just not sure I have the courage that some other mamas have!) On the other hand, if my son is really struggling with not wanting to wean, I'm not sure what I'll do then, either. I guess I'll just wait and see. In the meantime, I am perfectly content to nurse my son (and any of his stuffed friends) any time he needs it. After all, poor beleaguered mama cow is doing the same for many of our human babies and toddlers!

--Thanks, Connected Mom Shawna

Links on Extended Nursing (nursing past one year):

www.kellymom.com/bf/bfextended/ebf-benefits.html

www.llli.org/NB/NBextended.html

www.pediatrics.about.com/cs/breastfeeding/a/bf_toddler_2.htm

www.babycenter.com/0_extended-nursing-is-it-for-you_8496.bc?page=1

www.nursingbaby.com/nursing/extnurse.htm