Pregnant Mom Would Like Everybody to STFU About Her Decision to Tandem Breastfeed Her Toddler and Newborn

Pregnant women and breastfeeding women get a lot of unsolicited advice about virtually everything. So of course a woman who is both pregnant and breastfeeding is going to get a double dose of obnoxious interference every time she leaves the house or answers the phone because tandem breastfeeding apparently strikes a nerve. One mother in that unenviable position says people keep butting in and telling her to get her daughter “off the tit,” because she’s pregnant and breastfeeding at the same time.

According to Cafe Mom,  the anonymous mother over on the Breastfeeding Mama Talk Facebook group started getting tsk-tsked about breastfeeding as soon as her daughter turned one. Breastfeeding past a child’s first birthday is totally normal. The World Health Orgaization recommends breastfeeding until at least two, if possible. But for some reason, a lot of people take that 12 month mark as the point at which they start telling other women what to do with their breasts.

She doesn’t plan to stop breastfeeding her toddler when the new baby comes.

The mother was already tired of constantly being told to wean her daughter, and then she got pregnant while nursing. Now that she’s about nine months pregnant and nursing a nearly two-year-old, the unsolicited opinions have really started to fly.

“Well, now I am really hearing it,” she wrote. “Everything from, ‘She’s almost 2 years old, she don’t need it anymore,’ ‘You’re not setting a good example for her,’ ‘She will be picked on,’ ‘If I was you, I would tell her big girls don’t do that — they eat real food,’ (which, she does — all kinds of foods).”

Obviously two-year-olds eat solid food. But many also nurse. If they like it and the mother likes it, there’s no reason to stop as long as it’s mutually agreeable to the mother and baby. Who would pick on her for it? The other two-year-olds?

If it’s bad now, this mother is aware it’s only going to get worse when the new baby comes. She doesn’t intend to fully wean when the new baby arrives. Sure, the baby will get most of the milk. But a two-year-old can share. A two-year-old can happily nurse once a day. Heck, nursing two kids might even help the mother keep her milk supply up.

She’s thought this through and knows what she’s doing.

“Yes, of course I know my newborn will need it more than my girl does, and I am all for tandem feeding,” she wrote. “She will have to learn she has to share.”

What do these people think women with twins do? Plenty of women nurse two kids at a time with no trouble.

The mother was looking to vent and trying to find a polite and effective way of telling everyone to butt out of her breastfeeding choices. Unfortunately, the rude comments and unsolicited advice continue.

“I am just tired of being put down and told, ‘You need to distract her, get her off the tit!'” she complained.

Everyone thinks they’re an expert at breastfeeding. Strangers are constantly telling nursing women not to drink, eat garlic, take showers, and all sorts of random things that don’t make sense. With the idiocy that gets passed off as fact by random “experts,” I’d be shocked if someone hadn’t told her not to nurse while pregnant because her toddler might suck out the fetus straight through the nipple. (Biology is not the strong suit of random advice-givers.)

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s ever going to stop. I certainly don’t know how to get busybodies to butt out. At least she’s doing what makes her and her kids happy. Eventually, maybe a cousin will do something scandalous and distract everybody from talking about this woman’s breasts.

What do you think of tandem breastfeeding? Let us know in the comments.

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(H/T Cafe Mom, Image: iStockPhoto / kirillica)

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