Aug 7: World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1st to 7th August. Every year, many breastfeeding humans, Influencers, parents, doctors and nutritionists use this week to spread awareness, destigmatize the most natural and beautiful activity and bust myths around breastfeeding but apparently we have stopped so low as a society that we are trolling young moms who use the platform to share their personal journey. Saru Mukherjee Sharma, a celebrated Indian mom blogger took to her social media platform and shared her breastfeeding journey with her son Rudraksh aka Rudi in a personal and heartwarming post but the amount of backlash she received has us questioning what is wrong with people’s mentality.
Through a series of nostalgic pictures and a post etched with her journey as to how she breastfed her son till the time he was mentally and emotionally ready, she actually received hateful comments and DMs where people not only invaded her right to choose but also threatened to report the post for being too sexual! This is not only ridiculous but absolutely insensitive and hypocritical. Where we as a society are moving towards embracing and empowering every individual for who they are, celebrating their choice to wear whatever they want, pose however they like, will we now be shaming mothers to make the right choice for their child?
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“If you try to wean your child forcibly or just because people around you are telling you to do it, it not only would lead to separation anxiety but also can make your child aggressive, distant and moody”, says Saru on being asked more about her account of breastfeeding Rudi.
When we asked her to give a more detailed answer, she was happy to share and told us that due to their family shifting houses and Rudi starting preschool at 2.5 years, even after trying several times, Rudi was not able to wean properly and became aggressive, distant and disturbed. To solve the same, and after a detailed consultation with her doctors, Saru decided to breastfeed Rudi until he was ready. It was not about nutrition but emotional stability and balance.
What’s worse is that there were moms, women, and fellow parents who were trying to shame Saru. They are the same set of people from who any individual would expect empathy. Won’t such kind of behavior actually validate people for their hate don’t belong to the same community? While there were people who tore her spirit down, it was heartwarming and assuring to see many fellow content creators, mom bloggers and people lauding and supporting her, and encouraging her to not take the post down and stood there in solidarity. It’s people like these who reinstate that there is hope after all.
Breastfeeding and motherhood is the most natural, beautiful and intimate experience for any individual. If people try to bring moms and parents down for being too sexual for breastfeeding their own kid in public and otherwise, then we haven’t made any progress! Celebrating choice, uplifting women shouldn’t just happen when it suits your narrative and caters to your personal choice, it should happen regardless of it.
We applaud Saru for sharing her journey and taking a step to normalize breastfeeding and seeking help, not believing in society’s definition of normal and making the right choice for her son and herself. We need more Sarus to share their journey, their experience and destigmatize normal human body processes.
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