Parenting: It’s official. Breastmilk is yummier than ice cream.

Fresh out of Yurt University comes a rigorous* research project that can formally confirm that breastmilk is yummier than ice cream. The study surveyed a range of breastfeeding children** and posed the academically approved*** survey question;

“What is yummier?
A- Booboo
B- ice cream”

100% of the participants responded that booboo was yummier than ice cream.

*by rigorous I mean “enthusiastic”
**two participants, age 2.5 and 5
***by “academically approved” I mean “I thought it was fine, and I did a whole paper on research methods when I was 19, y’know”  

Mobile milk bar on the beach

Ah, the laughter and simple joy involved in breastfeeding older children! They don’t tell you this bit, it’s all either “GROSSS WHO WOULD BREASTFEED A TODDLER EWWWW THAT’S ABUSE” or “EVERYONE SHOULD BREASTFEED OLDER CHILDREN THE AVERAGE WEANING AGE IS 7” – both of which are fairly extreme positions and, well, untrue.

Cos here is the thing about most breastfeeding experiences… It can be just a simple, happy part of family life. No capital letters required, mostly.

Remember the days when I was blogging about breastfeeding all the time? They were great days. But now it has been a YEAR, a YEAR! Since I did a breastfeedy post. (It’s here – with some tandem breastfeeding where I look like a fierce Victorian.) And I guess that is just because instead of feeling like I’m out there, breastfeeding like a badass in a hostile environment, it just happens day in day out, with little fuss.

I wonder if this is because Juno looks so much like a baby still, with her fuzz of hair and freckled face. By this time with Ramona, she had a long shock of blonde hair and was wearing converse and people would STARE as I breastfed her… Seriously. Eyes for Christmas. I was also pregnant, so perhaps that required extra staring. Or maybe there are just enough hippies around us these days to help us feel that breastfeeding older children is perfectly fine in every way.

When hostility is felt, positions are polarised. The capitals come out and wild facts make an appearance.

And little stuff gets swept away. We have to storm the media with breastfeeding sit-ins and argue about the objectification of women’s bodies and the vital biological role of breastfeeding in children’s health.

It’s all so important. And we have to go on and on and on about it, we need to, it is how things change. (Please mamas, keep getting your boobs out. And sitting in and going on one.)

But we can miss out on describing the heart-swelling fullness of the breastfeeding gaze. When your kid is just drinking, and staring tenderly, but with a fierce focus, right in to your eyeballs.

And the way it seems to restore a busy child’s emotions, smoothing out enfrazzlement and giving a boost of happy.

And the loveliness of having children who talk describe what breastfeeding is like. And say it is yummier than ice cream. The other day Juno had almost had her fill, but not quite, but I was all out of juice. She squeezed my boob and said, frustrated, “Run out of batteries, mama!”

(Do we all love the iPad much, or what?!)

It’s a super privileged position I have right now, to feel so accepted in our breastfeeding older children thing, and to be able spend a few minutes being thankful for those small, quietely-felt ways that breastfeeding brings joy into our family life.

Whatever environment you’re in, city or hippy, welcoming or hostile, I hope your breastfeeding journey can be full of these beautiful, gentle moments.

And if your life is full of breastfeeding angst, and you find yourself having to come up with smart retorts for busy-bodies who have something to say, at least you can now pull out this robust research and declare that breastmilk is officially the yummiest foodstuff in the whole world which makes you the most awesome mum in the universe, as announced by the very best (and, um, most Not Real) university of all universities. So there.