"Why I Still Breastfeed My Eight-Year-Old Girl"

http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/vi...aspx?id=328277


A Penrith mum has appeared on national TV to explain why she is still
breastfeeding her daughter who is nearly eight - and why she gave her
older
daughter breast milk as a ninth birthday present.


Veronika Robinson appeared on the Channel 4 programme Extraordinary
Breastfeeding as a passionate advocate of allowing children to decided
when they
give up breast milk.


Mrs Robinson, a former journalist, her husband Paul, and their children,
Bethany
and Elizah, are all fans of organic food.


Elizah is approaching her eighth birthday and is not happy at the prospect
of
giving up her daily feed. "I don't want to be weaned. I want to breastfeed
for
ever," she said.


In the Channel 4 programme, broadcast on Wednesday, Mrs Robinson, 38,
spoke
frankly about her decision to defy convention.


She was one of several families interviewed after the World Health
Organisation
recommended that children should be breastfed until they are aged two. All
share
the belief that children should never be forcibly weaned.


While many people in the UK consider her decision odd, other cultures do
not
take such a dim view of prolonged breast feeding.


In an interview before the TV programme, 38-year-old Veronika described
her
reaction when Bethany asked for breast milk for her ninth birthday. "I was
delighted, if a little taken aback,' she said.


"I'd stopped breastfeeding Bethany when she was five - though I was
continuing
to feed her younger sister, Elizah - but obviously she clearly remembered
what a
wonderful feeling it had been. It was the best thing she could imagine
and,
presented like that, it seemed like a great idea."


Veronika, who edits an alternative-parenting magazine called The Mother,
www.themothermagazineuk.com ,continued: "My girls were brought up to think
it was completely normal to ask
for a breast in a shop," she says. "That's bad enough when they are
toddlers,
but when they are big girls, people get freaked out by it.


"I try to be discreet, but we have had some odd looks. People tend to be
disgusted and disbelieving."


"I can't believe any mother wouldn't love to hold onto that wonderful
feeling
you get when you are nursing your own child."


Despite the Breast Is Best campaign, designed to highlight the benefits of
breastfeeding to new born babies, only 68 per cent of mums routinely
breastfeed.
Of those around 80 per cent give up after just six months.