My 2 and a half year old still gets breast milk

In honor of of National Breastfeeding Month which is August, in case anyone didn’t know when it was; I have a confession to make.  My son gets breast milk on a pretty regular basis.  I hesitated giving it to him when the thought first entered my head and I further hesitate to write this and put it out there into the world. Yet, that is the role of my blog and hopefully those that read this.  To see how others do things, to push some boundaries and to lay it all out. SO in an effort to continue to normalize breastfeeding I’m going to tell you how my son went from drinking cows milk to mommy’s milk.
My son nursed until about 10 months when my body basically gave in and just wouldn’t do it anymore.  He got breast milk in decreasing quantity until he was a year old because I had enough in my freezer stash to provide it.  I became pregnant close to his first birthday and for the entire length of my pregnancy my son had whole milk just like any other 1 year old.  We of course have some weight issues with my son so his whole milk usually was either fortified with powdered milk or had a calorie additive in it like duocal and we would mix in Pediasure whenever we could without killing him with too much of it. My son was never heavier than when he was exclusively breast fed.  The introduction of food into his world was where we saw his weight fall right off the scale and we have never recovered.  He is currently 30 months old and weighs 23 lbs.  He was just over 20 lbs at his 2 year appointment.  To give you a range of what that means to those of you without children.  20lbs at a 1 year appointment would put a boy at the bottom range of the curve, my son wasn’t even close to the curve at 2 years old.
Our daughter was born when my son was 20 months old, I began breast feeding her as I did my son and we quickly fell into a routine.  Right around this time, after multiple trips to the nutritionists and a GI specialist we began giving my son either whole milk w/ heavy cream, which he hated and refused to drink or just straight half and half which he barely tolerated.  As anyone with a child with weight problems will tell you its all good offering high calorie foods but if they won’t eat it you may as well not feed them at all.  I don’t remember exactly what had happened, but somewhere along the line my son got a nasty cold that my daughter also got.  The difference was my daughter had breast milk to help her get over it, full of my antibodies and my son didn’t. Then within the same week we ran out of whole milk, I’m not the best grocery shopper you have ever met.  Regardless I didn’t have any milk and as I said he would barely drink the half and half so really what was the point.
Now my son loves sweet things, and breast milk is very sweet so this thought came into my I could just give him breast milk with his half and half.
My first thought was that is gross … my second thought was what was wrong with me, all my daughter drinks is breast milk.  My third thought was that my husband would kill me if he found out I was feeding our son breast milk at now 2 years old.  I couldn’t get over the nagging feeling though that he would have gotten over that cold with more ease if he had had some help and that he was never heavier than when he drank breast milk.
So I snuck it into his cup like a criminal, and he drank it.  A few days later after I had gotten some whole milk, I did it again and again he drank it all.  Surprisingly the more I did it the less weird it felt and the more I thought about it I realized that I had been programmed by society that children should drink cows milk.  The thought that my 2 years old could have breast milk since it was readily available was not the wrong thought process the wrong thought process was that cows milk was normal and my milk was not.
My son now routinely gets breast milk and neither he or I or his father thinks its weird anymore.  He never nurses, he never showed and interest and even my comfort level with breast feeding probably isn’t at that level.  It just goes in his sippy cup like anything else would.  He still gets sick 🙂 even breast milk isn’t going to stop that, but I believe he is getting some help from my milk and the antibodies that are in it.  Just like a multivitamin or an extra shot of vitamin C, a little extra push for his still developing immune system.  He gained 3 lbs in just under 6 months, again, not being solely attributed to breast milk but I think the fact that he will drink it mixed with half and half is helping our situation and even the nutritionist said when I told her, “whatever you are doing is working … keep it up.”
So my 2 1/2 year old gets breast milk and he will continue to until there is no more to give.  Hopefully if anyone out there is in the situation I was in or feels weird or like they shouldn’t tell people they are thinking about doing this someone will read this and let them read it to.  Don’t be weirded out by toddlers and breast milk.  Like I said, what is abnormal is that we think cow’s milk is the norm and breast milk is weird … not the other way around.