Every mother who has nursed past a year has heard someone's opinion that "Once they're old enough to ask for it, they're too old." This is, from health and evolution standpoints, absurd.
But especially in a culture that's still a little iffy on being made too aware of breastfeeding at all, the fact remains that having a verbal nursing kid can lead to some, ahem, interesting moments. They fall into a few key categories:
Baby Talk: Too Much or Too Little
1. "Num-nums!" "Oobies!" "Boob!" "Nu-nu!" There's no better way to realize that you have, despite your pre-parental protestations, incorporated sickeningly cutesy baby talk into your everyday vocabulary than to have it shouted at you in public and realize you're going to have to respond as if those words were language, and possibly even speak them yourself.
2. "Mama snacks!" "Hello nipple!" "Where's your breast?" Or the gourmet who says "Yum!" whenever he passes by the bras at Target. Some toddlers don't just nurse, they are vocal and articulate nursing enthusiasts. Some times so pointed that it's verbal equivalent of saying "damn the discreet cover-up." Which is fine. Except of course it was your kid's choice, not yours.
Your Words Out of Their Mouths
3. Version A: The politeness backfire. "Ask, nurse, please?" says one kid. "Hi. Milk. Smile," said mine for a while, betraying our attempts to explain what, beyond the technical words, constituted asking nicely.
4. Version B: Crossed wires. One mother reports that after training her son out of bad nursing behavior (oh, the dreaded twiddling) by repeatedly telling him he was all done with that, now he asks to nurse by saying hopefully "All done? All done?" (Bet she gets the "He wants to wean and you're not letting him!" treatment.)
The "Other Side" Confusion
4. "Side! I want side!" I thought it was a funny fluke that my daughter's younger friend picked up on her saying "other side" and began calling nursing "side." But apparently he's far from alone. That doesn't mean that anyone hearing will think it makes any sense though.
Parenting Shortcuts Exposed
5. Many of us have tried the squirting-breastmilk-on-an-oozing-eye trick. Whether or not it works, it gave my daughter the idea that she wanted milk squirted on her every injury. Once she got this in her head, a symbolic waving of a bare nipple across the offended limb was placebo enough to make almost anything instantly all better, so I played along out of laziness. Until, that is, I was on the sidewalk with a kid with a scrape who was screaming "Mommmmy! Milk on my knee! No! Milk on my knee!"
The Mini-Domme
6. "I'm going to open you up!" It's one thing to have a kid
determinedly lifting your shirt before you've said it's OK. It's another when it comes with a
declaration worthy of a TV surgeon. Of course that's better than . . .
7. "Uncover your nipples!" It's not as bad as it sounds, as she usually means it as a contrast to my having drawn the covers up over us in bed for a falling-asleep nurse, but I admit that I'm not-so-secretly hoping this one never leaves the house.
I'm sure I and mothers I heard these from are not alone. What has your nursing Baby Einstein come out with?
(Images were submissions to the Mothering breastfeeding icon contest.)More by this author:
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