After having told you about our adventures with Apra and her little fever period, I would also like to tell you about a big step she has taken recently: Apra is not drinking her mother’s milk now anymore – and I got to know that in English you could say ‘Apra is now fully weaned’. As it was so easy, much easier than we thought, I would like to share with you how it happened. Before I do that, however, I would like to have a look at breastfeeding in the two cultures that we are uniting in Apra, Ramona’s and mine, the western and the Indian culture.
In the west, women normally hardly breastfeed longer than six months. Many stop at three months already, some don’t even ever start. Women actually already decide during pregnancy whether they want to breastfeed at all or just use baby formula. Of course there are women who have lactation problems and whose children have problems during breastfeeding but there are also mothers who decide not to breastfeed, although they physically could.
One reason for this is their work. Mothers go back to work very early – career-oriented women cannot afford to stay out of business for too long. The difficult process of weaning a baby after just some months doesn’t seem worth the effort. Some choose an option that still lets their baby get the benefits of his own mother’s milk: they use breast pumps and feed their milk with bottles. Others use baby formula from the very beginning. A fact that I find rather sad, as breastfeeding does not only help a child grow a strong immune system – which a formula can never do as naturally – but also creates a very close relation in between mother and child.
That is the norm but among people thinking in other ways – people involved in yoga, alternative practices, spirituality and more basic living – there are also those who breastfeed their babies until they get weaned by their own wish. Until they just don’t want to drink their mothers’ milk anymore. At the base, an idea that I approve of – but then those children can be three, four, six or even eight years old! Somehow, that seems a bit too old for drinking milk at their mothers’ breasts, doesn’t it?
In India, most children are breastfed for two or three years. Traditionally and usually, mothers don’t go to work or only when the children are really already older. That means the mothers are at home for the children and they can also breastfeed. In big families, there are often several small children and so many women don’t even only breastfeed their own daughters or sons but also their nieces, nephews or neighbour children! Of course, in this way supply doesn’t stop or even get less.
While this is what usual happens and what most people do, things are changing in the cities, as so often. Women have started working and there is no such job security here as it is in Germany that you have a certain amount of months that you can take off while getting paid. If you are not there, you usually don’t get paid in most companies and you will most probably lose your job if you are not there for a year. So modern mothers wean early or stick to formula if they want to keep their career.
You may wonder about poor women, like the mothers of our school children, who often work in order to ensure the survival of their family. There are no concepts of maternity leave, child benefits or parents’ money in India. Really poor women don’t take a lot of time off work for birth. They give birth, get back on their feet as soon as possible and take the little one along to work, in a piece of cloth, wrapped around their upper body. The baby feels the mother’s warmth at all times and she will take a short break from cutting wheat, collecting firewood or carrying sand in order to breastfeed her child.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong. You have to know what feels right to you and what you can or cannot do. I however would wish that people who can would make the love and security that breastfeeding gives, the connection and bond that is created, more important than money or a career. Until you feel good with it.
Tomorrow I will tell you about our decision to wean Apra and how it was so much easier than we had thought.
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