Tamara Ecclestone’s Still Breastfeeding Her 21-Month-Old Daughter: Internet Can’t Deal
The socialite has always been very open about breastfeeding her daughter Sophia, and has posted numerous “brelfies” on Instagram. [Photo: Instagram/Tamara Ecclestone]
Mums can’t win. It seems like they’re either being criticised for breastfeeding their children for too long, or not long enough. In the case of Formula 1 heiress Tamara Ecclestone, it’s the former.
The 31-year-old came under fire in the summer after she shared a holiday breastfeeding selfie (dubbed a “breflie”) on Instagram, causing some of her less supportive fans to slam her for continuing to nurse her then sixteen-month-old daughter – and make it known.
The mum-of-one hit headlines after posting a number of snaps of her breastfeeding on holiday. [Photo: Instagram/Tamara Ecclestone]
She’s since spoken out about her decision to nurse her daughter. [Photo: Instagram/Tamara Ecclestone]
Ecclestone found herself embroiled in a media storm with some people claiming that the socialite could make mums who are unable to breastfeed feel inadequate.
But she wasn’t about to let haters influence her parenting decisions.
“That’s not fair to project your own insecurities on to what I’m doing,” she said at the time. “I’m not saying everyone should breastfeed, I’m not saying I’m Mother Theresa and what I’m doing is great. I’m just doing ‘me’.”
Four months on, she’s reiterated that being a mum is her number one priority and revealed her decision to continue breastfeeding her 21-month-old daughter for the time being.
“I’m still feeding her so if she needs to be fed I need to be there,” she told New! magazine. “My mum was like that until we were old enough to understand, and even then she’d only leave us with family. I guess it’s just the way I am.
“I don’t feel comfortable leaving Sophia with anyone in the evenings, and Jay understands how hands-on I am. So long as we do get our time together, he doesn’t mind if we’re in the house with a takeaway. It’s still just us. If she wakes in the night I want to be there for her.”
Sophia’s one of the most well-travelled babies in the world, and is constantly abroad with her parents. [Photo: Instagram/Tamara Ecclestone]
Breastfeeding on the go is completely normal to Ecclestone, whose revealed that she was nursed until she was old enough to understand by her own mum. [Photo: Instagram/Tamara Ecclestone]
Ecclestone’s by no means an anomaly, plenty of mums opt to mix breastfeeding with giving a child solids, although she is one of the only famous women to talk about breastfeeding her child for such a lengthy period of time. Many mothers swear by the power of their breast milk and endevour to nurse their children for as long as possible.
In August, a photography project went viral thanks to its powerful breastfeeding-related message. Featuring a collection of American women who continued to breastfeed their little ones past the 12-month mark, the images bared the title “We’re not ‘still’ nursing, we’re just nursing”.
The UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world with only one in five women exclusively breastfeeding for six months – which is the amount of time that World Health Organisation recommends. In most countries, nursing a child until he or she is up to five years old is completely normal, it just seems unusual in the UK because it’s such a rarity.
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