A mum who still breastfeeds her five-year-old son has said that mums should wean at their own pace, and that “just because it’s not a cultural norm doesn’t mean it’s weird”.
Amy Hardcastle, 27, from Lancashire, initially planned to breastfeed her son Max until he was six months old but changed her mind after hearing other mums’ stories and decided to continue until he wanted to stop.
Amy, who nearly gave up breastfeeding after four weeks because it was too painful, found new ways of thinking after joining online mums’ groups and attending a breastfeeding festival in Manchester.
She told Cafe Mom: “At first I just said, ‘Well I don’t know how long, I’ll just keep going’, and then I joined groups for feeding older babies.
“Because even when you get past about one [year] or 18 months, that’s when people consider that … like ‘Ooh, that’s old’.”
