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Old September 19th 06, 03:42 PM posted to misc.kids.breastfeeding,misc.kids.pregnancy,misc.kids
Anne Rogers
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Posts: 1,497
Default Need Advice: Breastfeeding with 3 older (13+) stepson's


You might ask him what exactly, is inconvenient about breastfeeding,
in his mind? After all, it's not as if he's going to have to do it
;-)
Point out to him just how *convenient* it will be. No bottles to
fiddle with, no boiling water or mixing formula, no *buying* formula
which is pretty expensive, no toting bottles on outings or worrying
that the formula stays fresh, etc.


absolutely there is no way that a bloke can consider breastfeeding
inconvenient, it's definitely more convenient for them! He may be saying it
out of concern for the women and he does have a point, breastfeeding can be
very tieing, but it's all about attitude, heck, I'm the child's mother I'm
going to have to look after them whatever way I feed them, breastfeeding
infants are fairly portable anyway and there is aways pumping and bottles
for special occasions (though if you want to do that, you do usually need to
get them started on bottles in a timely fashion, usually about 4-6 weeks).

To the OP, I realise these are not your kids, so I can see you are concerned
about how you are going to explain things to them, but presumably they
either already know about how babies are made, or this pregnancy has raised
questions? If they already know about how babies are made, there are likely
to have some vague awareness of the existance of breastfeeding. I know the
book that I had from fairly young about "how the body works" had conception
on one page, then pregnancy and the next had a picture of women
breastfeeding, chances are they have done something about it at school and
without having gone into any details, they will have some awareness that
that is how mammals feed there young.

I suppose there are two approaches, one is doing it face to face, bring it
up in conversation as a general baby care issue, "have you thought about
what the baby eats?", "where does the babies milk come from?", talk about it
as if it is the most normal thing in the world, because it is! I would
totally understand if that is not a conversation you want to have, so there
is the other approach of finding a decent book (others have suggested some)
and leaving it lieing around. Oh and there is one final idea, don't even
mention it, just do it, which makes it seem all the more normal, I'd be very
surprised if they would dare make a comment even if they wanted to!

Cheers

Anne