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Growing up in Arizona, I wasn't overly interested in the idea of having children. I didn't have a lot of younger siblings or cousins, so I was a little awkward around kids and didn't really know how to act around them. It wasn't until my senior year of high school, when my best friend had a baby, that my outlook changed. Seeing all the love she had for her child was incredible, I didn't know that was possible.
I think having children can seem so negative now. Many young people on social media only speak about the difficult side of parenting and it can come across as though being a mother sucks, but after my friend gave birth I could see it wasn't like that at all. I realized having a baby was a beautiful thing.
I met my husband when I was eighteen. I was working at a restaurant where he tended bar and we just really hit it off. Within six months I was pregnant with my son and everything kind of fell into place. Before he arrived, my husband was a little nervous, but I was really excited and thought it was the coolest thing in the world. My pregnancy was okay, however I wish I had known more; had some extra education and time to research, especially when it came to breastfeeding.
When I gave birth at nineteen, Slade was two months premature and I needed an emergency cesarean section. It was kind of crazy, I was on so many drugs that I didn't meet him until twelve hours after his birth. So when I first met him, because of the birth and the experiences around that, I did feel disconnected from the whole thing.
He was in the hospital for three weeks; I didn't get to take him home. It felt really detached. It's crazy to say, because I love him so much now, but I was waiting to feel that overwhelming maternal feeling. I wasn't able to breastfeed him at that time. It was only when we came home that I thought: "Okay, this is my baby. This is what I've been waiting for."
Breastfeeding definitely helped me connect with my son. I just felt so broken after the birth; my body had not carried my baby for the length of a typical pregnancy, so breastfeeding felt like the only thing I had control over. But I had such a hard time in the beginning.
Newborn babies don't develop their sucking reflex until they are 36 weeks old, which means that when Slade was born at 33 weeks, he did not automatically know how to feed. Before giving birth, I didn't have any knowledge of breastfeeding, so I just thought it would happen by itself and wouldn't be a big deal. That's the funny thing about breastfeeding, even though it's natural, it can be really hard.
A lactation consultant came to see me, but it felt like she just threw a bunch of information at me in half an hour, which was very overwhelming. She told me I would need to pump milk every two hours, but would have to use this special pump which cost thousands of dollars, but could be rented for $80 per week. I just thought: "What is going on right now?"
We rented the pump and in the first few weeks I was producing as much milk as I could, but I wasn't really taking care of myself, which didn't help. I was waking up through the night to pump and then bottle feed the baby, but it was so hard. By the time we came home, Slade was mostly on formula. I was trying to pump as much as I could, but when I reached that postpartum phase, I was bone dry. There was like a drop a day.
When Slade was around two and a half months old, the realization that my breastfeeding journey was likely over really hit me. I didn't want this process to be done and I didn't want him to continue on baby formula. I just thought: "I really do want this." I wanted to have that relationship with my son and it felt like the only thing I could control. So, after that, I just put that baby to boob, started researching and got him to fully breastfeed in around two weeks. I was just so ecstatic. I remember thinking: "This is it and I'm not letting go of it now."
After giving birth I can't remember anybody telling me definitively how long I should breastfeed for, but I think the advice for mothers is all over the place. Sometimes pediatricians will say six months and other times they suggest up to a year. Usually, the only time I hear about extended breastfeeding is from other moms. I think far more women do it than we recognize, but because it's not spoken about very often many people just assume it's not done.
When Slade was around eight months old and he could sit up by himself we introduced solid food into his diet, but he continued to breastfeed. Between the ages of one and two I thought he wouldn't really want to breastfeed that often, but he was still doing it six times a day, so I was like: "Okay, I'll just keep doing it." It felt like we were not done, he was so little and it was his comfort. Especially at one, it was still everything to him and it just felt natural to keep going.
I know for some people it's difficult to keep breastfeeding because you constantly have to be with your baby, but I was a stay-at-home mom and found it easy to be around him all the time. It really did make us so close, because I was nursing my child from nothing but my body. During the time I breastfed him, Slade was all about mom; I was his comfort and that's a really good feeling.
Breastfeeding is so much more relaxed after about six months. The relationship is so different and far easier, you just pop them on for a few seconds and they hop off. I stopped completely in the summer of 2022, when Slade was three. I think the relationship had changed a bit, I wasn't comfortable anymore and he didn't do it very often so it kind of just stopped at that point.
There are a lot of myths around how when children reach a certain age the benefits of breastmilk stop, but that is not true. Breastmilk changes with your child and their needs. It offers health benefits for the mother and so many nutritional elements for your child; you're helping them get protein, calcium and folate. Breast milk provides antibodies, there's tons of benefits even after they turn one.
My family and friends have always been very supportive, the only place I ever got any negativity was on social media. I knew it would be controversial to share my decision online and some people would get their panties in a wad about it. But I was like, whatever, I don't care, this is what I do. So I was glad to share that, educate people a little bit more and show that it's normal.
Around half of my comments were women saying: "Good for you," but the other half were trolls just slandering me. I think the majority of people making a huge deal out of the decision were those who have never even experienced or been around extended breastfeeding. Some strangers have called my decision gross or told me I am somehow sexualising my child. I was even accused of grooming once. Sometimes mothers comment about how they think I'm disgusting, which is something I just didn't expect other moms to do.
I think that breasts are so sexualised in society now. It's okay to feel sexy and confident about your body and breasts are a part of that, but I think to totally overshadow their biological purpose and to make women feel bad about nourishing their children is crazy.
I've gotten really good at blocking people now. If they say something very rude, sometimes I pin their comment to the top of my post, say what I want and let other users comment to help prove my point. But most of the time I just delete it or block them, because if people have those ideas I don't want them seeing my child or my page anyway.
Even though breastfeeding was initially hard for me, I knew that it was what I needed to do for my son and there is nothing anybody can say that will take that away from me. Knowing what my body is capable of is so cool, it's a journey I will forever reflect upon and have a lot of love for. I think my biggest advice to any mom who wants to breastfeed is that education is so important. It's natural, but it's not easy, so the more you're educated the further you're going to get.
Callie Barnum, 21, is a mom and content creator who lives in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow her journey on Instagram at @earthlymotherhood or TikTok on @callieanger.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Monica Greep.
