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Attachment Parenting
Married2MrWright
member
S/O Coworkers and BFing...
Married2MrWright
member
I work with 26 women (the entire company is woman-run) and the majority are not only mothers, but grandmothers. They LOVE babies! That said, most of them never BFed and are shocked to learn that I not only BF my DD but plan to continue to do it past 6 months.
The look on their faces today when it came up in discussion since we have a 10 day conference in Seattle this October and I mentioned that DD will be traveling with me (I am arranging for my mom to come with us to watch her while I work). I said that I will need a hotel room to have a minifridge to hold her milk, etc. One lady said, "won't she be 9 months old by then?" and I said "yes, but I still plan to be nursing her..." The room was dead silent. Finally, another lady says, "I nursed my daughter until she was 11 months old..." and then I said, "And the AAP actually reccomends nursing until at least two years of age."
Oh boy. I know in this day and age lots of mommies feel pressured to BF...where I live, it's the opposite. It seems generally acceptable to do it for the first 6 weeks or so but once mommy heads back to work the expectation is that baby will be on formula. Oh and that they'll be started on solids at three months. Don't even get me started with that one.
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Re: S/O Coworkers and BFing...
Wow... are many of these ladies moms of kids born in the last decade or so? The one thing that baffles me most about people and babies is why so few people take the time to READ material from reputable sources (ANY reputable sources, whether AP or otherwise) to educate and inform themselves about babies. Caring for your child is the most important job any of us will ever have. Why do people rely on what other people tell them or on what they think they know to be true rather than actually investigating for themselves?
Whether or not these ladies breastfed their babies themselves, if they have ever read anything remotely recent about baby care, they should know that what you're doing is best for baby. Yes, many other women don't do it, and it's especially difficult to do when you're a working mom, so that's understandable... but they shouldn't be acting like you're a freak. Kudos to the lady who spoke up and supported you by saying that she breastfed her baby until 11 months.
i'm from that same part of the world, and i know what you mean. i do think lots of women are feeling pressured to BF, but i don't see it in my daily life.
i met my cousin's new baby (~3 wks) for the first time this weekend, and my cousin-in-law explained that she just *couldn't* nurse because the baby had such a strong "suck" need that she'd literally be BFing 24/7. um, yeah, that's kind of what babies do at 3 weeks... i wanted to offer some kind of support, even just an expression of understanding how hard that is/was for her, but i couldn't think of a way to do it without sounding like a judging b*!ch.
still, i doesn't seem like anyone else worries about sounding judgmental when they express their shock (borderline horror!) that we're still BFing or that i don't plan to wean this very minute now that she's 1.
LOL! I live here, but I am actually from San Francisco. So it's really a dichotomy for me. In SF my GFs are feeling pressured to BF and here, I am feeling pressured not too (or not to do it for "too long"). So bizarre. Now that I have a kiddo I am realizing how crunchy I am in comparison to the other women here. At least in Dallas you can find babywearing groups, etc. People follow us around the store when they see me wearing my DD in a wrap carrier. It's funny actually. I had one lady come up to me and say, "they've recalled those you know." Ugh. But many others ask where I got it or how I learned to do it, etc. I am thinking of starting a babywearing group here, via MeetUp or something.
As for my coworkers, yes, several of them have kids or grandkids aged 10 our younger, so you would think they'd know better. Alas, they do not. Thankfully, my company is international and we have a lot of Swedes who will be attending the conference and they all bring their babies and BF in public, etc. so I will be in good company come October.
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It actually baffles me that people still think 6 months is the cut-off date. I know with my mom's generation, though, the doctor's told them that formula was better than bf'ing. I imagine people who don't have babies probably don't stay up to date on such things.
I'm in OK too, but I have a completely different experience. However, I work in public health and we used to do a bf'ing study, so its probably the environment here. My co-workers are extremely supportive of my continued bf'ing, fully support me pumping at work still, allowed me to work from home when my pump broke, etc. I went to a festival in Norman recently, and there were all kinds of moms bf'ing out in the open (including me) and wearing their babies. I always thought of Tulsa as being a little less conservative than the OKC area, but maybe not
I work with mostly women as well and im getting the same thing. in the 5 or 6 months that I have been back at work since having ds the lady i work with (not my boss but pretty much feels like she is) has asked me 7 times how long I plan on nursing my son/pumping at work. yes SEVEN times!
the last time she asked I just asked her if she had a problem with me pumping at work because shes asked me so many times when I plan on stopping, she looked offended by my question but she hasnt asked again since
Good for you!
I kind of thought that, too! But I still struggle with NIPing... even though I'm all brave to my husband! Hopefully it will get easier!
tulsa + okc both just seem like big nondescript cities to me. i'm from norman, and it has much bigger (relatively speaking) pockets of crunchiness (for lack of a better term) bc of the university. dallas does have the advantage of size, but the pervasive culture isn't much diff than oklahoma. big ole diversion off topic there... sorry, folks.
I have no idea...I've only been in OK (Tulsa) for almost 2 years (in June). Being from CA, especially NorCal, everything is more conservative here! LOL! That said, the church I attend has a nursing mother's room and there were two other ladies in there last week (one SAHM and the other is a working mom) and the two ladies who took Bradley with me and DH are also nursing. All of them used covers and I don't but I am not sure if that's because they're more conservative or not. My baby hates to be covered while nursing.
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So what you're saying is that when I go visit relatives outside of Wichita Falls on the OK border at the end of the month, they're gonna pass out when I nurse my 6mo old? Especially since he's roughly the size of a 1yr old
The Thanksgiving after DD was born I was up there and had DD in a sling at the grocery store. A lady came up to me and said "Yer not from around here are you?" I said no. She turned back to her friend and said, "See, I told you she was a foreigner!". Yeah... I'm from Houston, it's a whole other country.
LOL! That's funny about being a foreigner. I don't know anything about the Wichita Falls area. Seriously - the people I'm around have been really supportive of nursing past a year so I really haven't experienced the 6 month thing.