A mother, who lives in Cyprus, was brutally slammed when she shared a picture of her breastfeeding her daughter, Anastasia, three, during her third pregnancy, while her oldest son Nicholas, looked on.
Irina Naumova, 33, was severely criticized for sharing the picture and for exposing herself in front of her son.
One mother commented: ‘I’m all for breastfeeding but having an older boy standing next to his mum with her boob out for her three-year-old is kind of creepy.’
Another commented: ‘You are sick! The maximum, it’s two years!! God forbid which kind of a mother you are?!’
Irina gave birth to her third child, Leo in October. Irina, who is now a mother-of-three, breastfeeds both her newborn and her daughter at the same time.
‘Some wrote that I must be sick in the head to have photos like this taken, that I shouldn’t be a mother and that my kids will grow up with problems. All because they didn’t like the fact I was breastfeeding my three-year-old.’ she said.
Irina celebrated her third pregnancy as she had some professional photos taken.
‘Unfortunately, I was so busy during my last pregnancy that I didn’t have time to take any pictures myself and capture my big belly, so right at the end of it, I booked a professional photo shoot,’
‘They gate-crashed a few of the shots. Then my daughter wanted to breastfeed, so I let her latch on and the photographer took some spontaneous shots,’ Irina said.
‘I really liked one of those photos in particular and that’s the one I shared.’
She shared the picture in a breastfeeding support group and received 3,600 likes and positive comments from users.
‘I’m proud of myself for breastfeeding my babies and feel it’s important to spread the word about how good and healthy it is to breastfeed whenever possible,’ she said.
‘I was amazed at how nasty some of these women were being – shocked that fellow mummies would be so critical. I wasn’t upset, just genuinely surprised,’
‘So many uneducated people believe that it’s somehow dangerous to breastfeed while you are pregnant, that it will affect the unborn baby in a bad way,’
‘Several trolls were talking about how the bigger child will deprive the new baby of the milk, which is total nonsense.’
‘Having said that, on the thread, quite a few women were told by their GPs not to breastfeed while they were pregnant, with the docs telling them that it can bring on a premature labor.’
‘Unless there’s some underlying problem, this shouldn’t be the case. I went full-term with all three of my kids and all the labors were super-fast, with Anastasia’s being only one hour long.’