If you are close to me then you probably already know that my husband isn't really on board with a lot of my choices. He was getting antsy at the end of my pregnancy wondering when I was going to wean Taj. I think that he thought that my 2 day stay at the hospital after having Peylyn was going to put an end to it. Boy was he wrong! Once I realized that I was in my third trimester and still nursing I knew we would keep going for as long as it is still what Taj and I want.
Perry no longer has the disgusted look on his face when he walks into the bedroom and I am nursing both of them, but like clock work he is now asking "how long?" Sadly, I stopped way before Ajay was ready because my husband wasn't comfortable with me nursing him past 2 years old (I didn't know then what I know now so Zola and I stopped when I was 5 months pregnant with Ajay). It was awful trying to wean him, he became very aggressive when I wouldn't let him nurse.
Now that I am about 1 month from Taj's 2nd birthday the question is coming up yet again. This time I am a little older and wiser. I told him the other day that if he wanted me to stop nursing he would be the one that would have to wake up and comfort Taj in the middle of the night. Yes, that shut him up real quick! He has it so easy, even if he is the one to wake up first when he hears Taj at night he know he can go get him and hand him over to me to nurse him right back to sleep. If they both wake up at the same time (usually Taj is still crying on the way to our room and he wakes up Peylyn) he knows I will nurse them at the same time and they go right back to sleep. Please, if there is a man that has it any easier let me know.
My question is "Why do men care how long we choose to nurse our children when we aren't asking them to do it?"
My immediate thoughts are probably like many are thinking-
ReplyDelete1. they worry what others will think, it's not something we see in our society or is discussed outside of mommy circles of support
2. they feel like they don't get access to our breasts like they would if they weren't being used for what they were invented for, which of course is to feed/comfort/mother our young
3. along those same lines they see breasts or remember breasts as sexual in nature and this makes them not so sexual
4. they may have a hope that the amount of sexual interaction will increase if the babys are weaned
5. they may just have some jealousy of the closeness that mother and child share in nursing relationships
6. I've even heard of dads worrying about a boy baby especially not growing up macho and "normal" if you let them breastfeed so long- just a complete lack of understanding of what a breastfeeding relationship actually is and does for a child
I think I had more of these types of comments when I was tandem nursing more so than I do now that I'm only nursing one. I don't hear it from my husband because he just knows I think that this is what the baby and should be doing right now. He has also been more than happy to stop after having 2 boys and I have told him that this may be my last baby and that I have no timeline to wean my last baby besides the timeline he and I come up with as he grows older and his needs and my needs change.
Yes I think fathers of breastfed babies have it very easy. No one expects them to do anything to comfort or feed the baby. At most they get a baby for you but are right back asleep and you nurse the baby back down and make the world right again. If there is trouble, tantrum, sadness, illness, hunger, just a need for closeness the breastfeeding mom is there to make it all better. If we weren't breastfeeding they would need to figure out how to make bottles and the formula runs out and you still have to figure out how to soothe the baby, it's not just have mommy nurse the baby and make it all better.