TIME’s Breastfeeding Cover – Thoughts from a Breastfeeding Momma

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If you’ve been online, you’ve undoubtedly seen the TIME’s breastfeeding cover.  It is a controversial one and it has ALL of the opinions of the Internet coming out – for better and for worse.

The cover, to me, was simply shot for ultimate shock value and to sell magazines (why else would this boy be standing on a chair to nurse?) but I take zero issue with the extended breastfeeding happening on the magazine cover.

I am still nursing my nearly eighteen month old daughter Willow.  It is a relationship that I cherish and could not picture my days without this being a part of it.  She loves it too.  She will walk over to me and sign/say “more” and when I ask, “More what Willow?” she looks at me and says, “More momma.”  At night, she will walk over to the rocking chair in her room, pat the seat and say, “On. Momma, on” and she knows that I will sit down, scoop her up and nurse her to sleep for the thousandth time.

When she falls or gets a little bump, I nurse her to calm her down.  When we were in the children’s hospital and she was in tachycardia (her heart rate was 225bpm), I told the hospital staff to let me nurse her and it brought her heart rate down to normal and potentially saved her from a scary situation.  In short, it’s a situation that I am incredibly happy to be in and to be honest, I can not even imagine navigating parenthood without breastfeeding.

A cover like this one brings out some very interesting opinions.  Opinions that make me really sad.  It makes me sad because I like to think that our society is evolving, is open and is accepting.  However, not all people are.  In the issue of extended breastfeeding, it seems that a lot of people are extremely opinionated and the majority of those opinions are coming from people who have never breastfed, who have never done extended breastfeeding and who simply sit back and apply a label.  Apply an opinion.  Apply a judgement.

I could go on and on in anger about people’s opinions but it won’t change anything.  I simply ask that if you are one of those people who think breastfeeding past the age of one is “gross” or “incestual” or “wrong” and if you believe in silly sayings like, “When your baby gets teeth, wean them off the boob” or “If they can ask for it, it’s no longer acceptable”, take stop for a moment, ask yourself why and reconsider.  Consider alternate viewpoints and think about you and your children (or your family if you do not have children).  Think about all of the things you do in your day, decisions you make for the well-being of your child and ask yourself, “How would I feel if I were scrutinized?”

Wake up tomorrow with the notion that you will be a more loving, accepting and open-minded individual and see what happens.  It may very well surprise you.

DIY Felt Board and Free Felt Stencils

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This weekend was filled with lots of DIY projects, all focused on my wee girl.  As she gets older, it becomes more and more important for me to find things that I can do with her to stimulate her imagination and to stimulate her senses.

Our latest project involved creating a felt board and felt shapes using stencils.  Before I begin however, a HUGE thank you to my friend Megan who originally gave me the idea to turn my plexiglass easel into a felt board when the weather isn’t so great.  You can find her on YouTube here where she vlogs about her pregnancy and her sweet little boy Dagney.

For this, we used the following materials:

  • 1 3×3 piece of black felt (bought at Michael’s for $6 or so)
  • 20 (or so) sheets of felt in different colors (bought at Michael’s for $0.47 each)
  • Velcro (you can buy strips of it with adhesive backing at the dollar store)
  • Scissors
  • Pen
  • Paper

I first looked around online for appropriate shapes and things so that I could print and cut them out to place on the felt for tracing.  I’m including the PDF download of stencils that I put together this morning.  You can download that below.

I printed out the stencils, cut them out, placed them on the felt and traced them.  Then, I cut the shapes out in the felt using whichever colors I felt were most appropriate for each object.

Once all of the shapes were cut out, I then cut pieces of velcro (appropriate sizes to the size of the shape/object) and removed the adhesive backing and stuck them onto the felt pieces.

My plan is to put velcro on the large felt piece and on the plexiglass easel my dad built for Willow (post on that to come soon!) and make it so that I can velcro the felt board to the easel when we want to do felt play.  Today however, I simply tucked the large felt piece into the back of my couch cushions and let her play right there in the livingroom.

Willow LOVED this.  She loved saying the objects and pulling them off the felt and sticking them back on.  It was such a great sensory activity for her and something that will last her a long, long time.  It was also SO inexpensive to put together!

DOWNLOAD FREE SHAPE & OBJECT STENCILS
(Includes alphabet stencils as well!)

I hope you find this helpful!  If you have any other ideas or tips on playing with felt, leave them as a comment! 

Free Food Choice Sheets for Toddlers

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When your toddler reaches the age where he/she is striving for more independence, you might find that they will want to dictate what they are having to eat and drink.  I was finding this with Willow so I created food choice sheets that contain photos of foods she eats regularly, categorized by fruits, vegetables, breakfast, main meals and snacks.

I plan on taking these sheets and doing two things with them:

  1. Putting the sheets in laminated sheet protectors and using them as a teaching tool.  This will let me work with Willow to learn what each food is and show them to her on the sheet as she is eating them.  Putting them into the sheet protectors means I can simply wipe them clean when done!
  2. Cutting them out and pasting them onto magnets.  I want to be able to put the food choices on the fridge, depending on what we have in stock at the time, so that when we are planning Willow’s meals, we can simply go to the fridge and ask her what she would like to eat.  She can then point to the food choice and voila, it puts the control (to a certain degree) into her hands.

If you’d like to download the sheets that I made, you can do so here.  It is a Microsoft Word document with tables.  You can delete foods that you don’t want on the sheets and add new foods simply by doing a search for free stock photography and adding them onto the sheet yourself!

DOWNLOAD FOOD CHOICE SHEET

Please share this with anyone you know who may be interested in giving their toddler some choice in the kitchen.

UPDATE

So we made the magnets and they are AWESOME!  I snapped some photos for you to take a look at.  I can’t wait to use these with Willow tomorrow.  Giving her choice and letting her pick what she wants to eat (for the most part) should go a long way in helping her feel independent and learn about making good choices.