The breast of times

I've nursed my son through four birthdays now. I know what the critics say, but it's what he wants.

By Judith Woodburn

Read more: Parenting, Children, Breastfeeding, Life

Sept. 18, 2006 | My son turned 4 a few weeks ago. His birthday wishes included the following: real binoculars, anything to do with Spider-Man and to keep on nursing.

In the past two years, like a slice of Wonder bread squeezed into a marble of dough, the breast-feeding my son so treasures has been compressed into something that only vaguely resembles its original self. For us, nursing has become a brief bedtime ritual that lasts as long as it takes me to sing the alphabet song. It involves little overt emotion; most of the time the process is as perfunctory as the tooth brushing that precedes it. It no longer offers much nutrition: My milk has dwindled to a few desultory drops.

What this ritual also became long ago is a loosely kept secret. For many women, the decision whether to breast-feed at all has become a public litmus test of maternal devotion. Recent government efforts to promote it have provoked an emotional debate that boils down to one loaded question: Are you a bad mother if you don't breast-feed? Having experienced the challenges of breast-feeding firsthand, I don't think so. But having started down this path, my personal debate has involved a different question altogether: Am I a bad mother if I haven't stopped?

Though there is a growing body of scientific knowledge about the nutritional value of breast milk, science has relatively little to say about breast-feeding's psychological value, and even less to say about continuing past the usual milestones. The World Health Organization promotes breast-feeding until age 2 and beyond. American Pediatric Association guidelines recommend breast-feeding for 12 months, and after that for as long as "mutually desirable." But what to do when the desire -- on the part of at least one party, anyway -- shows no real sign of abating? When physical nourishment is almost beside the point, and what we are talking about is mostly the emotional kind?

In some quarters, my decision might still be considered criminal. In 2000, a 5-year-old in Illinois was taken from his mother when a baby sitter reported to police that he was still breast-feeding. In 2003, a Dallas mother was arrested after having taken a picture of herself breast-feeding her 1-year-old. Even in Madison, Wis., where I live -- once famously described by radio host Bill O'Reilly as a place so liberal you expect "people to be communing with Satan" -- the line separating "OK" from "Oh, yuck" still seems thinner than a bra strap.

Unlike critics, who seem preoccupied with what they perceive as the sexual nature of contact between a child and his mother's breast, I don't worry for a minute that my child may become sexually maladjusted in any way. Nursing produces the opposite of excitement or stimulation for a child. Sometimes I do wonder, though, whether by not cutting off this particular source of comfort and calm I am prolonging his learning to calm himself. And every now and then I wonder if, merely by virtue of its rarity, his extended time at the breast will make him feel different-bad instead of different-good.

As a practitioner of "extended" nursing, I'm hardly alone. I could connect in online forums with a whole underground of mothers who are breast-feeding toddlers and preschoolers, even two and three at a time. This is not a club I ever aspired to join. Before my own child was born, the term "extended nursing" would have brought to mind Ruth in Toni Morrison's novel "The Song of Solomon," who demanded that her school-age son suckle from her tired breasts even when his feet reached the floor. Before I had my own preschooler, a mother still nursing a 4-year-old was surely a mother with "issues."

Then I became a mother. Issues followed almost immediately thereafter.

When pregnant, I was lucky enough to be an executive in a toy company that was supportive of breast-feeding mothers. Two electric pumps (no waiting) in two converted shower stalls allowed space and a modicum of privacy for the handful of mothers in my office who breast-fed. I mapped out a plan that would allow me, in theory, to keep my boss, my staff and my baby happy. I would return to work after a truncated maternity leave and would report to the shower stall for an hour each day so my son would have his pediatrician-recommended due: mother's milk for one full year.

The breast-feeding guides I pored over promised an easy, nay, delightful experience. After my baby arrived, though, it was clear some critical details had been omitted. Not all newborns know what to do. And, contrary to appearances, an infant's gums are anything but soft. Breast-feeding him hurt like holy hell.

I turned for help to the sort of experts I'd felt betrayed me. A hospital lactation advisor advised nursing in a cross-armed position that required the use of two pillows. She recommended I massage my breasts while feeding (a third arm would have come in handy here) and prescribed an herbal supplement to increase my milk supply. I swallowed weedy capsules by the fistful.

Each week, we visited a clinic where white-coated ladies watched our latching process, murmured encouragements and rearranged the baby's lips and my nipples with impunity. They weighed the baby and his diaper before and after nursing, and I gauged our progress gram by hard-won gram.

The baby worked hard too, and when my maternity leave ended, it seemed we were both relieved. He took eagerly to the bottle while I worked, and switched back willingly to the breast when I returned. As for me, disappearing three times each day to fill his bottles was awkward and inconvenient, but compared with actual nursing it felt like relaxation.

Next page: No one in our play groups was nursing anymore -- at least not openly