Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Beginning to communicate

Hobo Mama wants you to know she's a professional blogger! Look at how professional she's being!

It's so exciting to see Mikko begin to signal, even though at five months he's still pre-verbal. Well, by pre-verbal, I mean that he babbles all day long, but he's the only one who can make any sense out of what he's saying.

But he's started telling me when he wants to eat, by plucking at my shirt and ducking his head against my chest. I've been enchanted. My baby is speaking to me!

I know pulling at a mother's shirt to nurse is sometimes considered ill-mannered, although usually in older children. And I know there's that stupid argument, "Once they can ask for it, they should wean."

But I am so very excited that my baby knows me, knows what he wants, and knows how to tell me so. Hooray!

And I think that, if at 5 months, a baby can "ask for it," then that shoots the weaning-at-that-point argument dead. Right? I hope most people even in the US aren't icked out by a 5-month-old breastfeeding. (Sigh. I just realized there must be plenty of people who are.)

Here's a good post with good comments on "extended" nursing that references what I was saying above. It's been funny to read Our Babies, Ourselves, and see Meredith Small mention that such and such a people group weans early...at 2 years. I love it! What a great anthropological, mammalian view! That's why I'm putting "extended" in quotes, because for humans, according to Kathy Dettwyler, true extended breastfeeding would be anything over 7 years. :)

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