Breast Feeding Diet?

While sitting across the table from my friend Christy enjoying a nice meal at a local Whole Foods I knew something interesting was going on behind me from the look on her face. Christy being a very polite person did not say a word, but I could tell from her face that I should not turn around and look, but I so wanted to. Instead I sat patiently yet desperately trying to look at the reflection in her eyes to make out what was going on.

When the appropriate moment came around she told me in hushed tones about the child behind me who had finished eating her cliff bar, getting off her chair and pushing over to her Mom where she was able to get back up the chair and get a drink of breast milk.

Now a mother breast-feeding in a Whole Foods is not an unusual sight. But the idea that a child who is old enough to get up move her own big chair and take care of her own breast feeding is another issue. Christy at first thought the child was four, but we gave the mother the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe she was just a very large three. Whichever, she was old enough that the mother felt no need to hold her hand when they were going to the door.

Our conversation turned quickly to breast feeding, which we both agreed was an ideal way to feed a baby, but not necessarily a child who can do it self service. I told Christy of a friend in Washington who had a neighbor whose son got off the school bus and came in my friend’s house where his mother was visiting and asked for a “snack” and the mother whipped out her snacking breast. That was really where I draw the line.

I know women who loved breast-feeding because it kept their metabolism very high and they either lost tons of weight while doing it or were able to eat copious amounts of calories and not put any weight on. Now I am not suggesting that this mother today was using her three, perhaps four year old as a diet aid, but a mother who can afford to shop at Whole Foods probably does not have to personally produce the milk her child needs for nutrition at this point.

I am just interested in how long a suckling child will feed if allowed to? Based on the Washington experience clearly being able to ride the school bus alone is not too old? I wonder if that boy is still that close to his mother? Since that happened over 25 years ago I wonder if he is still living in her basement?

Breast-feeding as a diet aid is not in my cards anymore so I am happy to cross that off the list as an aid to get off those last holiday pounds.