Josias and I attend a weekly program called Music Together, in which babies, toddlers, preschoolers and their parents sing, dance, play instruments and have fun with music. Josias loves his music class. We have a CD of the songs we sing in class and we listen to it in the car. Josias sings along, predicts what song will come next and makes requests.
As much as Josias loves Music Together, in his mind (I imagine), there is one thing that could make it even better. Milky! Although the timing of the class does not coincide with a time that Josias would normally want to breastfeed, he asks for milky during every music class. Always at the end when we sing a lullaby, and occasionally during some peppy dance number. We scoot to the side, sit on the floor and breastfeed. Often Josias tries to sing or dance at the same time.
We are entering our third ten-week session of this class and each has been a different group of children and their parents. During the first session, several of the children would come stare, hover and sometimes point when Josias would breastfeed. I loved their curiosity and the fact that they were watching a toddler breastfeed. One mother explained to her son that Josias was getting his milk from his Mama and that he used to get milk that way too. In our current session no one pays much mind when we breastfeed.
Until recently I hadn’t really thought about breastfeeding in music class, but lately, I’ve started to wonder, with all these babies and toddlers, where are the other breastfeeders? My guess is that several of the babies and toddlers do breastfeed, they just don’t do it in class, because of timing, because they are thoroughly involved in class, or any number of other reasons. At this point, Josias does not care that he is the only one having milky during music class. Will he start to care? Will I?
I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I love the fact that Josias has found joy in music and that we can experience his discovery together, including through breastfeeding.
Do you attend activities with your child where you are the only ones breastfeeding? How does it feel?
Photo credit: Lorena
