I think in the end nobody knows what’s best for other people’s children. Nowadays everyone tries to be expert on this and on that. There are safe ways of co-sleeping and like in the case of breast feeding, it’s the mother who knows best.

When my first was born at Karin Grech Hospital, the fridge in the kitchenette was stocked with ready-mixed bottles of baby milk formulae (different brands). I was not forced to breastfeed, nor was I in a physical state to do so after an emergency caesarean and after haemorrhaging very heavily the next day (as in a 1m-circumference puddle of blood when I attempted to stand up after a few hours).

When my second was born at a private hospital, it was an entirely different story – I sent the nurse to blazes when, barely out of the anaesthetic from my second caesarean, I was asked if I wanted to breastfeed … and I continued to be pestered about breastfeeding just the same for the entire duration of my stay there.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/children_shealth/8854674/Babies-should-sleep-in-mothers-bed-until-age-three.html

[Daphne – You have clearly not read the entire story, which makes it clear that this particular researcher is out on a limb. As any sensible parent will tell you, allowing children to sleep in your bed until they are three years old will mean 1. a whiny, clingy and insufferable child, 2. a child who, at 3, will refuse categorically to leave your bed and sleep in his own, which means you are in for a year of sleepless nights when the child should have long been past them, 4. a divorce or close to it, 5. absolutely no sex life unless you are prepared to sneak out of bed and use the carpet or the kitchen table or are a pervert, 6. bedtime at 7pm with your child, because if the reason he is in your bed is to sleep with you, then obviously, he is not going to sleep there alone until midnight. Oh wait, I almost forgot! The children of crazy parents like those NEVER have bedtime – they go to bed when they feel like it, around 11pm.]

Could this have been the fact that this was a private hospital?

[Daphne – Yes. The policy at Karin Grech Hospital was absolutely no formula milk and let’s not even talk about it or consider it as an option.]

Was that so hard? Or maybe you’re making the mistake of thinking, since breast is natural then everyone has to put up with it. Context and environments are irrelevant, it is my right to breast feed and I’ll breast feed quddiem il-Kappilan if I have to… come on.

Breast feeding is a beautiful and natural thing to do, in private or in sheltered environments such as a restaurant booth, rather than sitting in open-plan seating right next to the glass wall facing a main-street).

If they’re comfortable with it you can do it in the presence of your close friends (or colleagues) or with your family.

Do we really need to go back to 1920s Sicily with women breastfeeding on their doorsteps and men hollering about how they’d like to suck the lonely one hanging there and little boys screaming, “Look that woman’s with her titties out!”

Does modern woman really want to be reduced to what they were for thousands of years and what they are now in some Muslim countries?

Next time you decide to hold off your call to nature to be in time for a 60-minute meeting, appreciate the fact that some women will take it upon themselves to go as far as breastfeeding during important business meetings.

I heard of a case from a good source (who happened to be female) where a woman brought her baby to a business meeting with a VIP (who also happened to be female) and half way through the meeting, this woman randomly started breastfeeding with her left tit just hanging there for all to see, mouth agape.

No one in the meeting could concentrate. All she could see in this meeting was this person’s swollen nipple staring at her. Someone gently made a request that maybe she should excuse herself to the empty room next door until she was done and she was met with, ‘its only natural, everyone does this, there is no shame’. Yeah maybe not in the middle of business meeting and especially not in the presence of a VIP.

Defecation, urination, eating, sleeping and having sex are all natural things that everyone does, but there is a time and a place for everything.

The reality is that if you tell women that you have to breast-feed then some of them will take it upon themselves to breast feed almost anywhere. If it’s OK to breast-feed behind your office partition on a quiet day, then it’s OK to breast-feed at a party while others stand around you with drinks trying not to notice.

Breastfeeding is healthy and passes things to do the child that formula milk simply does not. If you cannot breastfeed your child without doing so in public then do what women with sanity and sensitive nipples do.

Buy a breast pump. put the milk in a bottle in the fridge, put it in a Thermos and feed your baby your own milk without acting like you live in 1920s Sicily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQB2X9T0l20

Now he should stop telling women what they should do.

My doctor insisted that my physical health could not sustain breastfeeding after the birth of one of my children. Whilst my midwife was in full agreement I still had one nurse who kept on insisting, until I lost it and told her where to shove it.

You are so right on this (as with most insomma) I went with new age bed sharing, breast feeding on demand, the works, etc., with my second born (funnily enough I was decently normal with my first born daughter – must be the age difference) and now he reckons he owns me. And her brain developed quite well too.