Commentary

I will turn 48 next month. My youngest child just turned three, and she is not fully weaned.

With four children, I have been breastfeeding for 11 consecutive years, and I am tired.

I am ready for my body to feel like my own again. I am ready to sleep through the night without interruption and to move through a day without being physically tethered to another human being. And yet, here I am, still nursing a few minutes before bed, a few minutes in the morning, and whenever she is hurt, overwhelmed, or simply needs comfort.

What has surprised me most is not the physical exhaustion. It is the internal dialogue.

Intellectually, I know this is normal. Anthropologists often place the natural age of weaning for humans somewhere between 2.5 and seven years old when compared with other mammals and traditional societies. Across much of the world, extended breastfeeding into toddlerhood is not unusual.

And yet I feel it.

The quiet embarrassment when someone asks if she is still nursing. The subtle shame that I have not managed to wean her yet. The sense, however irrational, that I am somehow behind.

In the United States, the cultural norm tells a different story. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for about six months, with continued breastfeeding for two years or beyond as mutually desired by mother and child. But in practice, only about one in four infants in the United States are exclusively breastfed at six months. By 12 months, fewer than half of babies still receive any breast milk at all, and the numbers drop sharply after that.

So even when you are within biological norms, you can still feel outside of cultural ones.

That tension is where the discomfort lives.

Because the benefits of breastfeeding are not theoretical. Breast milk supports immune function, reduces the risk of infections, and has been linked to lower rates of asthma, obesity, and chronic disease. For mothers, extended breastfeeding is associated with reduced risks of breast and ovarian cancers and improved metabolic health.

Beyond the data, there is something harder to quantify but just as real: connection, regulation, and comfort.

I see it every time she falls and comes running to me. Every time the world feels too big and she finds her way back to my arms. There is no confusion in her mind about what she needs.

The confusion is mine.

Because somewhere along the way, even with all my talk of sovereignty, even with a life built around questioning systems and returning to nature, I have still internalized the pressure of the culture around me.

It shows up in small moments, in passing comments, in imagined judgments, and in the subtle belief that I should have this figured out by now.

And that is the part worth examining.

Where does that voice come from?

How many other places in parenting do we override our instincts, not because they are wrong, but because they are inconvenient to the expectations around us?

We see it in how we feed our children, how we educate them, and in the medical decisions we make. We see it in how early we push independence and how quickly we expect them to grow out of needing us.

It is easy to look at other people’s lives and assume they have it figured out. It is easy to step into the role of authority and speak confidently about how the world should work, how children should be raised, and how systems should change.

But it is just as important to turn inward.

To examine where we ourselves feel pressure, where we bend, where we question, and where we feel the quiet pull to conform, even when it does not fully align.

I share this not from a place of certainty, but from a place of honesty. Because I think it matters that we show the full spectrum of ourselves. Not just the conviction, but the doubt. Not just the strength, but the vulnerability.

Both can exist at the same time.

I do not believe I am harming my child by allowing her to wean at her own pace. If anything, every instinct I have tells me the opposite. And yet, I still feel the pull of wanting to be done, paired with the equally strong pull of not wanting to force an ending before she is ready.

There is no clean answer in that space. There is only a quiet returning.

Back to instinct. Back to responsibility. Back to the understanding that this relationship between mother and child is not meant to be dictated by averages, timelines, or cultural comfort.

It is meant to be lived.

You can trust your instincts and still question yourself. You can be confident in your choices and still feel insecure. You can stand firmly in your beliefs and still feel the weight of the world pressing in.

The goal is not to eliminate that tension entirely. The goal is to recognize it for what it is and choose, again and again, not to let it lead.

Because at the end of the day, I am raising my child, and that responsibility belongs to me.

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