Friday, February 27, 2009

Breastfeeding & 4 year olds

Thursday I had the great joy to meet a new friend at B&N so she could help me copy recipes from cookbooks while we sat in the cafe. I had Lydia with me, and she had her twin 4 year old daughters. First allow me to say, they are adorable!

I had a bottle for Lydia, but she was more interested in nursing, so I went ahead and pulled up my shirt and let her nurse. The girls had never really seen anyone nurse a baby before and they got in close to see what Lydia was doing. They were curious, maybe a little weirded out. I let them look, because, well, I'm not shy. And that started a little teaching moment.

I told them that Lydia was drinking milk, that moms with babies can make milk. I asked if they'd ever seen a baby cow, horse or other animal drink milk from their mommy. They had, so that made things a little easier, and their mom helped with this point.

I asked if they thought it was kinda funny, because by the look on their faces they surely thought it was. They were pretty insistent that Lydia would rather drink out of her bottle. :)

To the mom of those twin girls - I really hope it was okay! Maybe they'll grow up and be breastfeeding advocates and it'll all be traced back to their boring day at B&N! Maybe not. *shrug*

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Ok so I totally thought this was going to be a post about breastfeeding your 4 year old, LOL! I love when older kids are interested when I'm nursing and I always try and explain it the best I can too.

Alicia said...

I liked your analogy. :) I also thought it was going to be about breastfeeding your 4-year old, and sadly, I know someone who does that. :( That's for a different post, though...

Mary said...

A&E weren't weirded out at all! Every kids needs to know how that all works, and now they know. The girls are so curious and always want to know the truth. Now they know, and they could really care less. To them, it was like learning about weather or something, now they know and its done. Thanks for the teaching moment.

Like I said before, when I was pumping for Kate it was the worst time in our lives. Teaching the girls about how a woman's body works was no where on the horizon of priorities. We were more concerned about telling them that Kate was going to die soon and that our time with her was limited. So, they saw Lydia eating, and now they know. Thanks for providing that teaching moment for the girls.