Breastfeeding a six-year-old? (And breastfeeding in general....)

How about a nine-year-old?

I just saw the most interesting story on 20/20. (I'm a news junkie, OK?)

They spoke to three women who were still breastfeeding their children well past the normal age that most children ween off of the practice.

OK, I say, hey, that's their choice. One woman said it was her way of comforting her child. Another said it was just they way they did things in their family - and who am I to judge how these people are raising their children? My only problem with this would be, personally, that I wouldn't be able to bring myself to breastfeed a child once they got teeth. Can we say OUCH?!?!

But this got me to thinking about public breastfeeding. You know, most people think it's pretty gross. Most people want women to cover up - and I can understand why they'd want that. But, then again, our boobs are used to sell everything from beer to automobiles. This wasn't their intention - the actual use of our boobs are to provide nourishment for infants. On a sidenote, if it weren't for the man who started the Nestle company, we might ALL still breastfeed our kids, both publicly and privately. (I'll post the story behind that at the bottom of this post.) Is it so wrong for a woman to feed her child in public? The kid's hungry, feed it. No one objects when a woman breaks out a bottle to feed her kid on the bus or in the park, so why pitch a fit if she breaks out a boob to do it? After all, that's what it's actually there for.

(The Nestle Story:

The Nestle company began when the man who started it, Henri Nestle, invented infant formula as a way to feed infants who, for one reason or another, could not nurse. I'm not saying this is a bad thing - I mean, what would you rather have, a child who's eating formula or a child who's going to starve to death? Personally, I'd rather have the former. But, it begs the question, if he hadn't invented formula, would we still be breastfeeding 100% of the time?)