To Eat or Not Eat Boo-Boos

One of the most enduring stories of my childhood–one that my parents liked to tell regularly all through my life–was that I breastfed until I was two-and-a-half years old. My father would always finish the story by saying that he knew it was time to cut me off when I started walking up to my mom and saying, “I want to nanny-suck.” My parents always laughed at this point, sometimes whoever was listening would laugh, too, sometimes they just got a queasy look on their faces. I usually just sat there smiling, I didn’t really see any harm in breastfeeding that long, why not?

Now that I have a 19-month-old that is still breastfeeding I have two reactions to this story. First of all, I don’t think it was exactly true. I may have said that and that may have been why they decided to stop but there’s no way I was a full year older than my son is now when I quit breastfeeding. I know that because my year-and-half old already walks around talking about how he wants to “eat boo-boos” all the time. Occasionally, this involves my wife sitting on a child’s chair with her shirt hiked up while G stands and feeds.

It’s a strange sight (and not the strangest, but I can’t and won’t go into it) and a little unseemly and has us both thinking about when and how we are going to move G on. Quite honestly, I don’t’ see how my parents could have taken 30 months of breastfeeding. In fact, I don’t see how any parent could because it’s starting to get weird around here.