"Appropriate" Breastfeeding

First of all, here’s a link to another Lisa Belkin post on “Appropriate Breastfeeding” (her title–no quotes).

With that as a backdrop, let me tell you about what happened in the bathtub last week with my 2.4-year-old son. He has a little orange plastic boat that when you flip it upside down has a big cavity that can be filled with water. In the bath together at the end of the day, we were playing with the upside-down boat: my son would fill it with water and have a little sheep go over to “drink” from it, then pass it to me and have the little cow I was holding “drink” from it. There was lots of typical two-year-old talk here: “Mommy turn, cow drink water,” or “Marcus turn, sheep drink water,” and “More water!” etc. Whenever I made the cow “drink,” I would nuzzle its face into the boat and say “nomnomnom,” which my son thought was fun and would mimic for the sheep. Then, he got an inspiration: he moved the sheep from the boat to my breast, and said, “Sheep turn, wawawa [his word for nursing]!” For the next few minutes, he alternated the sheep and the cow “nursing” from my breast. My husband, standing at the sink nearby just finishing brushing his teeth, was very amused. “Who can I tell this to?” he asked. “‘Cow wawawa’–that’s great!” The three of us were almost hysterical laughing.

So yeah, take that, “appropriate.”

–Christina