(That title should bring in the Google perverts, eh?)

Last night I was pacing the living room with a fussy Breanna, watching “Desperate Housewives” on television. I haven’t watched it religiously this season because I find it’s gotten a little dull compared to last year. Still, I see it fairly regularly.

Last night, Lynette was trying to hire a woman named Veronica to work at her office. The offer wasn’t that great but in the end Lynette convinced her by showing her the great on-site daycare facility and assuring Veronica that the company would be very supportive of her taking breaks to breastfeed her son.

And then everyone found out Veronica’s son was five years old.

I nursed Hayley until a few months shy of three years old. Obviously I am pro-breastfeeding when it’s possible, and obviously I have no problems with extended breastfeeding either. However, even I get a little uncomfortable at the thought of a five-year-old nursing, especially if it’s frequent enough that she would need to do it several times during the work day; with Hayley it was generally only at night with rare mornings here and there.

It wasn’t the age that bothered me about the episode though. What bothered me was the end result. At first, when confronted, Veronica defended her choice with explanations that breast milk continues to offer vitamins, antibodies, and all sorts of benefits, including possible higher IQ levels. These are all things that you can learn if you read about breastfeeding at the World Health Organization website. Although I wouldn’t be comfortable to extend it to that age, I applauded her choice.

Then Lynette pulled a fast one on her; when the little boy came looking for Mom and her milk, Lynette said she was in a meeting and then co-erced him into trying some of her chocolate milk. Just like that, bam, he self-weaned because Mom’s breasts don’t produce chocolate milk!

At first I was annoyed with Lynette; sure, maybe I’d feel awkward seeing someone breastfeed a child of his age, but it was seriously undermining Veronica, and as a mother herself, Lynette should know being undermined is frustrating and rude.

In the end though, I wound up annoyed at the show – because when Lynette stumbled across a crying Veronica later that day, she wasn’t sobbing because a long-time bond had been severed. No, she was distraught because breastfeeding was the only way that she had been able to eat whatever she wanted while keeping the weight off. “I’ll have to join a gym!” she wailed.

It just seemed like such a disservice to breastfeeding. First of all it made breastfeeding past the age of saying first words seem freakish by choosing a particularly higher age for shock value. Then it made somewhat of a mockery of the whole thing by showing that it wasn’t really about the continued value of breastmilk, but rather as a weight loss tool for yet another vain woman.

I guess I just wish that they had chosen less of an “Oh my God!” age, like two, an age that isn’t unusual but that is still seen as odd by many people, and that they had shown Veronica sticking to her guns and educating people as to the benefits of breastfeeding for so long.

Then again, maybe I should just stop expecting prime time television to educate the masses.