I would really like to tell you what I think of you and your opinion, but I am afraid I am going to break my humandecencymeter, so I’ll let it go.
I’ve only travelled with my husband, and on long flights the airline tries to accomodate you and put you in more spacious spots, or giving you an extra empty seat if available (kids pay too, regardless of whether they sit on your lap).
Well of course she stands up in front of me and nurses like a calf at the teat! 
I nurse Bella in a plastic lawnchair sometimes (my fancy “office” chair), and while it’s not the most comfortable position in the world it gets the job done. My preferred position is laying on my side but it’s not always practical.
If it was a simple matter of thirst a sippy cup might do, as long as she didn’t heave it at a passenger. Kid’s got quite an arm on her.
Really, I would try to do everything I could to keep from nursing in public, mostly because of my own shy nature. I have only had to a few times. Twice while shopping I quickly made my purchase and went to my car to take care of business. I’m just trying to put myself in the flying mother’s place.
Malacandra :smack:
I suppose I could have worded that better, eh?
To clarify, I meant I hadn’t planned to nurse her because I expected to go back to work in construction and I just couldn’t see any practical way to pump and store milk. The night she was born I thought, “maybe just a little”. And here it is a month before her second birthday and I’m still home and she’s still nursing.
I nursed both my kids, including in public, so I’m completely pro-nursing pretty much anywhere, anytime if necessary. But I did find myself drawing the line a few years ago at a homeowners association board meeting, when the husband of one of the board members came in mid-meeting with their five-year-old daughter who walked up to her mom, announced, “I want to nurse!”, and mom obligingly pulled up her shirt and started nursing her on the spot. With the kid standing in front of her.
I’m not easily shocked, but that definitely did it for me.
Okay then, where are the boundaries? Where do we as a society draw the line about when, where and whom it’s appropriate to breastfeed in public?
Many of the posters here are having their fun spitting and snarling about those uptight Victorian prudes who are trying to make everybody else as repressed as themselves, yadda yadda. But if we’re going to throw out the previous (and in many people’s minds, still applicable) rule about no breastfeeding in public, what new rule will we replace it with? Is it acceptable for mothers to nurse kindergarteners at board meetings, as in Mama Tiger’s anecdote? Should, say, autistic or developmentally-disabled teenagers who still derive comfort from nursing also be breast-fed in public? Where will the line be drawn?
It’s easy to rant and jeer at other people’s prudery. But successfully changing etiquette requires not just attacking old social rules, but also establishing workable new ones.
I have been to at least one country where being naked in public is completely legal. Absolutely legal to go stark naked in any public area, and yet I did not see roving gangs of women showing their tits. What makes you think that the vast majority of women don’t have a (culturally imposed) sense of modesty? Even in very liberal countries, where not only is breastfeeding seeing as the norm, but it is also legal for women to show their torso, that is not a problem.
And abou “late” breastfeeding, that is such a rare occurrence (the person I know breastfed her kids until they were 6 is now 60+, I am guessing she did it to space out pregnancies). Nursing is a lot of times an unconfortable proposition, you have to deny yourself many things, and I assure you, the bottle is MUCH easier, so it is in women’s best interest to restrict it. Most women I know that breastfed their kids only did it for the bare minimum reccomended (6 mths), or even less. Somebody mentioned *one *case of an older kid being breastfed, have you seen any yourself?
Should we make a rules just for these very few cases? And why? How about averting your eyes, same as you would do if someone had a big, scary, hairy mole on their noses. That’s what my mom taught me.
Everybody should draw the lines wherever they want, as long as they don’t try to prevent what is (AFAIK) something legal.
Oh man. Well, all I have to say to this is:
Kids have most of their lives to be adults, and only a very few, precious years to be babies. I cannot imagine the purpose of hurrying kids out of their childhood. Have you read this article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15905527/, about how “10 is the new 15”. You have little girls hitting puberty at 7, 8, 9 years old; 12 year old girls who look (and dress) like 16, 10 year olds who find their parents embarrassing and draw their values and morals from their social peers.
Why would anybody want to force a child to “grow up” when they’re 2? I found it offensive when my mother-in-law wanted to force my 7 year old to “become independent” by having her go to week-long summer camp. What is this desperate need to force children to be other than what they are?
Yes. I nursed my oldest child until the age of 5 (she self-weaned, so gradually and painlessly that I cannot tell you exactly when it happened); one of my twins to 3 1/2 (and I weaned her because I had become pregnant again). My youngest weaned herself at her own rate. She was 2. Yes, children will acquire self-comforting methods, but sometimes the best, easiest, most comforting, and fastest method available is a two-minute nursing break. The exhausted screaming toddler who has lost control and is too tired to get a grip, can be lulled into relaxation and silence. It’s not the ONLY tool in the parenting toolkit, but it’s an extremely useful and powerful one, and it has as much to do with skin contact, warmth, a comforting embrace, and a relationship that has continued reliably since baby was born…as it does with milk. So what if the toddler is running the show? She doesn’t get to decide much else in her life.
And here’s another thing I haven’t seen anybody say at all, in all the calls for the mother to shut herself in the bathroom in the airplane…
You know, if I were on a plane, and I had to use the toilet, I would FAR rather a nursing mother stay in her own seat and be as discreet as possible (which may not be very discreet, but I’ve been there, done that, and I would be sympathetic and supportive, rather than critical or offended)…than tying up the only toilet for as many as 100 people for who knows how long?
Also, I would rather see a mother nurse, calm, and settle her child, than have the child screaming. As for the suggestion that the child should “simply take a bottle instead”…not all children do. And a child that does not, cannot simply have a hard rubber or silicone nipple (which bears absolutely no tactile similarity to a human nipple) forced into his or her mouth. Not only would that be abusive if it continued, but it would probably cause MORE screaming.
Now…how about that 2 minute nursing break for the kid? more power to it.
Now, second-last row seems to me that she’s at the back of plane and if she’s on a window seat, it’s more than likely that the only person who could see her bits and pieces, apart from her husband, would be the flight attendant. Presumably, her husband isn’t fazed by it, but the flight attendant is the person who refused to deal with it. But then again, Ms Gillette points out that she was not exposed; because she was holding her shirt closed. I doubt she wanted the flight attendant to see her boobs anymore than the flight attendant wanted to see them, and so she was probably being as modest as possible without resorting to using a blanket.
Oh god, if only.
All in all, I’m not offended by breastfeeding; you gotta do what you gotta do and if nothing else, at least the kid wasn’t squawking. I’ve been on plenty of flights where I’ve really felt bad for the mother of a child in pain from the pressure changes but the other passengers won’t give her any slack for something she can’t control.
As far as breastfeeding a 22-month old - it’s her kid. She’ll raise it as she sees fit and she’s not harming the child by breastfeeding it as long as she ensures that it’s getting all the nutrients it needs through other foods as well - whether or not she does, we may never know but what business is it of ours?
If the plane was about to take off - as the article says, the kid should be strapped in. Dangerosa is right in saying that there’s more than one side to the story but unfortunately, we’ll probably never hear it.
In light of reading further through the thread - I’m more inclined to smack the individual flight attendant, but not before hearing her side of the story. If she was being uptight - then aim the anger at her, as Delta seems to have tried at least, to make ammends.
I don’t know if different airlines have different types of belts, but the ones we got flying three different airlines were of the type that I would have been able to breastfeed (not very confortably though) while still having the child strapped. I doubt the plane was so close to taking off since other people were able to board the plane and the Gillettes were kicked out. It’s hard to do that after the plane is taxing around the airport.
In my flying experience also - children under two (which this kid was) do not get their own seat, but are strapped to the parent’s seatbelt with a special extender belt of their own. And yes, you can breastfeed with it on (quite straightforwardly, I found, with the aid of a cushion or two)
Wow. I just can’t imagine this. My boyfriend has a 6-year-old son, and I can remember when he was 4, just turning 5, and I just cannot imagine this walking, talking, reading, writing, joking, video-game-playing kid sucking on his mother’s breast. I can’t imagine the teasing he would get from his siblings or classmates for being such a “baby.” At age 4 and 5, one of his biggest goals was to be a big boy and to master all the new skills he was learning (swimming, skateboarding, video games, reading/writing, art). I just can’t imagine him reverting back to such an infantile behavior.
I could understand if you lived in a third-world country (or lived 100 or 1,000 years ago), or needed to supplement his nutrition because you were poor and couldn’t afford healthy food.
But hey, it’s your kid! Do whatever you want. Breast feed them until they are in high school for all I care. You have the right to raise your kids whatever way you want, and I have the right to my own opinions on how to parent.
Because when there isn’t a rule, people clash over different opinions about what the rule ought to be.
And that’s because there’s already a well-established etiquette rule that mandates politely ignoring personal disfigurements like scary hairy moles.
At present, though, there’s no well-established uniform etiquette rule about politely ignoring people who deliberately expose parts of their body that are generally kept covered. If a guy pulls out his penis in public, for example, the reaction is not likely to be limited to people politely averting their eyes.
If we want a well-established uniform etiquette rule that says breastfeeding in public is always acceptable under all circumstances, we’re going to have to work to get it established and uniformly accepted. Not just scream and pout at the (many) people who haven’t yet accepted it.
But “everybody drawing the lines wherever they want” is exactly what’s causing the problem here. People have different ideas of what crosses the boundary between decent behavior and indecent exposure. And when their ideas clash, they get mad at each other and start lawsuits and Pit threads and so forth.
Moreover, AFAICT it would be perfectly legal for Delta Airlines or any other private business to institute a “no public breastfeeding permitted on our premises” rule. I doubt that’s what you had in mind when you said that “everybody should draw the lines wherever they want”.
In the U.S. you can have a lap baby (which you don’t pay for or pay half fare for) or you can pay full fare and get the baby a seat. The FAA and the American Pediatrics Association (the same people who want you to breastfeed as long as possible) highly recommends that babies have their own seat and be strapped in using a car seat.
http://saferidenews.com/html/Airplane_Eng.htm
A lot of parents choose to have lapbabies on airplanes. Like a lot of women choose not to breastfeed. Their baby, their business, I suppose when it comes right down to it. I just find it odd that the people who scream over the APA breastfeeding recommendation and believe they are doing what is best for the baby would choose to ignore the other recommendation that says “leave em strapped in during flight.” I suppose that in a lot of cases you HAVE to choose - if you are exclusively breastfeeding on a long flight you may have no option but to unstrap the baby. I doubt a 22 month old is exclusively breastfeeding. And I also suppose its possible that she was feeding a two year old strapped into its own seat by bending over, but it doesn’t sound like that from the article - where she has the window and her husband is next to her - leaving the toddler most likely on her lap.
And the very thought offends you. Yes, I can tell. But look: every child is different. As I have already noted, one of my children weaned herself at the age of 2; the others were older. They also walked at different ages, and I might add, were ready for potty-training at different ages. Why exactly must one size fit all?
In the case of my eldest, by the time she was 4 and 5 years old, she only nursed once a day, and only as long as I could bear (sometimes to the count of 10). Yet if I refused her, I would catch her sucking her thumb later, when she thought I wasn’t looking. She still needed to suck. Some kids do. As I didn’t want her to take up the habit of thumb-sucking, I allowed her brief moments of - as you term it - reverting to infantile behavior. In those few moments, my bold, outgoing child curled up, her eyes fluttered shut, and she became briefly a baby again. It didn’t last. She would get up and resume her headlong dash into growing up. As she got older yet, she would forget to nurse for days at a time, and then a week at a time. Eventually she simply forgot. There was no trauma, no harsh authoritarian demand on my part that she Grow Up. She simply grew up…at her own pace.
Now what was the problem, again?
Oh yes. That people might shame her, as your boyfriend’s son would have been teased, shamed, and otherwise treated with anything but respect, for doing something that might have been important to him. Well, fortunately for my daughter, there was no one in her life (except my grandmother, who tried it ONCE) to treat her so disrespectfully.
The flaw in the assumption you make is this: that there is a day, some magical day, when a child is suddenly a Big Kid, and not a baby anymore. You think walking, talking, etc are somehow turning points. They are not. They happen gradually. And at a different point for every child. I’ve known mothers whose babies walked at 6 months (honestly!) and one of mine walked at 2 1/2 years (due to physical problems). Two of mine walked at 17 months, and one at 13 months. One didn’t talk until 3 1/2, and then suddenly came out in full sentences and paragraphs. The rest were talking before two. I’ve known people whose kids talked in full sentences at 18 months. Those things don’t matter.
What matters is that the baby you give birth to gets a day older every day. One day the baby cuts a tooth, one day the baby speaks a word, one day it pulls up and tries to walk…and then the baby is two, and still loves to cuddle up with mommy and pat her skin and look in her eyes, and take her soft nipple into his mouth, and taste milk sweet as sugar…in her safe, warm arms. I could not imagine looking at a calendar and saying “Okay kid, the calendar says you’re too old. So too bad, get over it, grow up.” And I didn’t. They decided on their own when they were “big enough”. It worked for us.
You’re assuming that nursing is all about milk, and nutrition. It isn’t. It’s about a relationship. This particular relationship happens to involve a breast. Would you say the same about a 5 year old who particularly loved to be snuggled and cuddled: “No more, kid, you’re Too Old!” Would you unilaterally say the same to a beloved adult in your life: “Nope. You can’t ever touch me again the way you’ve always enjoyed, because you’re Too Old”.
And by the way, yes I know this is the Pit, but the use of hyperbole doesn’t help your argument. Nobody is recommending or even talking about high school aged nurslings. Even my oldest nursling had simply forgotten to nurse anymore at the end, as life and big girl activities became more interesting and more compelling.
I’m sure, if you ever have children, you will raise them as you see fit. You will have your own reasons, and you - and your children - will live with the results. I just hope you’ll allow the possibility that your opinions about parenting might change in the face of a baby whose needs differ from your expectations.
At this moment I would also like to introduce other unrelated subjects, such as the use of helmets, teaching your kids not to talk to strangers, not letting your kids play with plastic bags -whether or not they are marked “this is not a toy”, leaving children unnattended in the bath and many more. :rolleyes:
If you wish to discuss the safety of safety belt extensions for children under 2, and if you start another thread, I would be happy to read, maybe even participate. In the meantime it has nothing to do with the subject at hand, however much you wish to make it so.
And by the way, please show me where the FAA has reccomended breastfeeding. Sounds like something the shouldn’t be meddling with.
What I’d like to know is what takes so damned long for the airlines to OPEN the DAMNED DOOR once the plane is at the jetway?
Most of the time, I just wait in my seat until everyone is off of the plane, but occasionally I have a really tight scheduling for a connecting flight. So what gives?
The plane hadn’t even taken off yet so I don’t suppose it would matter whether the toddler was strapped in or not.
Chotii That was a beautiful post. I feel the same way. My Bella is slowly weaning herself too, only down to two or three times per day. It’s bittersweet…sometimes it drives me crazy, other times I’m sad to find it ending. Mostly because my baby girl is growing up and I know that she’s the last I’ll have.
I just don’t see the point in pushing them to grow up any faster. Hell, they grow up fast enough as it is!
The APA has recommended both breastfeeding and the use of car seats in airplanes for anyone under 40 pounds. Since the recommendation for extended breastfeeding has been raised in this thread, the other APA recommendation that conflicts with what they were doing is fair game to raise. They’ve also recommended not letting your kids watch more than an hour of TV a day, not keeping guns in the house, wearing bicycle saftey helmets, and all sorts of other things. Many which I ignore myself.
The FAA doesn’t give a damn about breastfeeding, far as I know.
Most airline accidents happen on the ground. Many happen pulling away from the gate. Especially when you are taxiing, you are supposed to stay in your seat and buckled in.