Breastfeeding is also for children

So for this article, I'm expecting to receive a flurry of green wood. I understand, when we don't know, when we don't live it, when we don't have breastfed children around us, it's been weird in our French society for a few decades.
I, too, used to breastfeed as a child, was directly reminiscent of that totally unhealthy scene in the Games of Thrones series, where a 10-year-old child, completely overwhelmed by the mass, is holding his crazy mother to her head, disgusted by this incestuous character. In fact, I remember, in Victor's first month, when I called an LLL host for the first time and she told me that her sons had suckled until they were 4-5 years old, so I thought it was just extreme....

Then I met his sons and to my great surprise, they were in good mental and physical health and were very independent. They had weaned on their own, which is called natural weaning. But it still wasn't for me.

Recently, a blogger whom I particularly like took on the face for a photo of her when she posed more chastically than 99% of the advertising posters, co-wrapping her two-year-old infant and toddler. After reading some outraged and aggressive comments, I thought we were walking on our heads. I also understood that this anger stemmed from misunderstanding or frustration:"it is not women who are breastfeeding but societies" has never been so true. And there are also the others, those who don't care, and that's good.

I wrote to this blogger, joking that if I posted a picture of me breastfeeding Victor, almost 4 years old, it would be "bloody". Always so calm and serene, she answered me that if it were her, she would have no problem showing something so natural.
Show to make people see and not be seen; explain not to convince but to make them understand, to give information simply. To advocate not to impose the practice but its normalization, I told myself that I finally also had somewhere, a responsibility to make breastfeeding and natural weaning common place.WHO warns of very low breastfeeding rates in the West
Recently the WHO has sounded the alarm about the lower breastfeeding rates of western babies and has called on every country to dare invest in information campaigns to lower rates of illness and death. If western babies were exclusively breastfed for up to six months and in addition to diversification for at least two years, millions of euros or dollars would be saved every year in medical care.

From one diktat to another: women are no longer free to breastfeed "for long".
Be careful, I'm not saying that all women should breastfeed by force, don't make me say what I didn't say! But if breastfeeding says "long" (I prefer to say "not shortened") was normalized again, my little finger tells me that many women would allow themselves to breastfeed longer, supported by their spouses, their families, their bosses too. But the problem is that, as we have gone from one diktat to another, it is always difficult for women to listen to each other.

So here I say, the most ridiculous coming out of the world: I'm breastfeeding my 4-year-old son!
You don't breastfeed a four-year-old like a baby either. It's no longer on demand, everywhere, anytime if you don't feel like it, roughly at home it's two times five minutes except peaks when it's in contact with a virus or heavy fatigue.
So, it is true that it was varnished with allergies and that I didn't have many other alternatives but I also saw the replacement of my milk made according to its DNA by that intended for another species as a nonsense. Socially, I used allergies as a good alibi for leaving me alone. Anyway, after a year, you're considered hopeless and nobody says anything anymore.
Time passes and it develops well and is never sick. I know that it is not infallible but 4 years after still no otitis, angina, gastroenteritis, childhood disease on the horizon or then attenuated version thanks to my antibodies, my doctor said. However, his daddy and I were sick with him and he was with other kids every week in the parent-child or toy library relays.
He doesn't have the jaw deformed by sucking a teat or thumb and was able to muscle his jaw and form his skull as naturally as possible, says the dentist who recently told us that this kind of jaw becomes increasingly rare.

The child who plays an active role in his or her own development by weaning himself/herself from it
But above all, it is an actor of his development and when he becomes more severe (because all the children will be able to sebum themselves, if, if you don't worry because after the milk teeth fall, which are named after them, the child loses their sucking reflex), it will be a big step, an important milestone. There is a lot of talk about self-directed learning and natural weaning is one of them. Little by little the child gradually claims less, then more at all when he or she has decided to do so.

Natural weaning is between 2 and 6 years of age

When I carried out research on anthropological studies of breastfeeding, I discovered that in all hominids (of which we are a part), natural weaning occurs between two and six years of age, on average four years. Not so crazy, the hostess I met actually.
I didn't see anything coming. Nothing was premeditated. Each month was added to another and one day I stopped wondering about it. I decided to trust my child who knows what he needs. My mothering does not follow ideological precepts but follows the instructions which are before my eyes: my child.

He took the time it took him to not fall asleep at the breast when I was present (he was going to sleep in my absence and adapting but it wasn't ideal for him) and for some time now the cododo has been reduced to the last part of the night and he falls asleep alone in his little bed. There, when you come to this point, in our French society, you get the passport for "normality" and those around you who are not very confident in you and your child, push a "uf" of relief.
A child with a pacifier and a cuddly toy doesn't shock anyone!

While all these children need the thumb to soothe their suction cravings, a blanket to replace the presence of the reassuring mother, it does not bother anyone. All these items created to replace, in an emergency, the mother became the norm. My experience as a volunteer in a breastfeeding support organization has brought me into contact with hundreds of mothers who suffer from peer pressure to be replaced by things they do NOT want.

I am not campaigning for everyone to do like me, I am not glorifying those who have taken the same path as me either.
I also have girlfriends who don't breastfeed or have breastfed for less "long" than me, we don't care, we don't compete! We respect each other's ways of doing things because we are good with our choices. Sometimes, they ask me questions about breastfeeding or cododo, and I answer them gracefully not to convince them, but to help understand, to normalize what our hearts should no longer reject (we would surely see fewer pairs of breasts to sell vacuum cleaners and beers, too).
If we have survived for thousands of years it is not because of "Gallia", and those who drink it will also survive.
I don't want anyone to be proud of me or disgusted.

I'm just breastfeeding my four-year-old. I don't want anyone to be proud of me or disgusted. I just wish we could remember that this is normal, that it's one choice among others.
It's free, good for him. The problem is precisely that it doesn't enrich anyone so communication level (sell a free product what an idea!) only mothers and fathers can stick to it.
So that future generations of bloggers who will also make this choice don't have to write about it.