Mom Defends Breastfeeding Nearly 3-Year-Old Daughter Despite Negative Comments Over Toddler’s Weight (Exclusive)

• Madison Simpson, 22, shares her experience with "extended breastfeeding" — nursing a child past the age of 1 — on her TikTok account The Breastfeeding Momma where she has over 16,000 followers.

• She shares videos about feeding her daughter Amaya, now age 2, who was born with Intrauterine Growth Restriction. Simpson believes breastfeeding helped the infant grow normally despite her doctors' predictions.

• The mom of two has continued to nurse her daughter — from her breast, never a bottle — into her toddler years. Simpson plans to continue until Amaya is ready to "self-wean."

When Madison Simpson welcomed her daughter nearly three years ago, her baby Amaya weighed just over four pounds. She arrived with Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR), and doctors warned Simpson that her newborn would struggle to thrive during her first year of life. They expected Amaya to be a tiny child.

Despite having some trouble nursing her first child, son Amirion, Simpson started breastfeeding Amaya as usual, and within a month, the infant was defying the odds set by her medical team. Her growth was off the charts for both height and weight.

The mom of two tells PEOPLE she attributes Amaya's improbable and rapidly stabilized health to nursing, and because Amaya recovered so quickly, Simpson opted not to slow down the means of feeding. Even now, at age 2, her daughter still breastfeeds, and never from a bottle.

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“Feeding a baby past the age of 1 breast milk, not from a cup either, is all normal. They can breastfeed up until they're five,” she says, adding that her doctors have encouraged the process.

Today, Simpson, 22, has built a following on social media by advocating for “extended breastfeeding” and sharing the benefits of it. In addition to support from Amaya’s medical team, the Indiana-based mom has seen firsthand how nursing gives her daughter extra support, especially compared to her son Amirion, 3, whom she could only nurse for a few months.

“My son was constantly sick as a baby, and then my daughter, she was not, and I think it has to do with the antibiotics from the breast milk,” says Simpson. “[Amirion] was in the doctor's office three or four times a month, sick with different stuff. And [Amaya], she never got sick. She never got anything compared to him. Whenever we all got the stomach bug, she didn't get it.”

The only time her lactation consultants have ever advised Simpson to stop breastfeeding was at times when the mom was ill, but she says she decided to continue anyway. Even then, there was no change to Amaya’s health.

Related: Breastfeeding May Help Improve Mothers' Brains Long-Term, Study Finds

“Your breast milk will create whatever your kid's saliva is telling it to. If your kid's sick, it's going to pull more antibiotics from you to help them fight the sickness,” Simpson says, citing what she’s learned directly from doctors.

On social media — which is one of Simpson’s main jobs, in addition to selling homemade candles — she’s often asked how she’s been able to produce milk for so long. First and foremost, she finds it important to acknowledge that “not every woman can breastfeed,” as she experienced with Amirion, but if a woman is able to, she can continue if desired.

“It doesn't matter what shape or size you come in. Like me, I'm 90 pounds, so most people are like, ‘Wow, you can breastfeed?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I can,’” she says. “I also am totally against taking any kind of medications that could decrease your milk.”

As for why she exclusively feeds Amaya directly from her breast, Simpson says the toddler refused to take any bottles from a young age. She tells PEOPLE she does get “a lot of stares” in public.

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In a January explanatory video posted to her TikTok page, The Breastfeeding Momma — where she has over 16,000 followers — Simpson did admit that the act takes a toll on her own body since she herself is quite small.

“Whenever you breastfeed, you don’t want a child all over you. Heck, I can barely breathe most of the time,” she admitted to her followers while holding Amaya on camera. “But you know what? I do it for my child, and that’s what makes me a good mom.”

As beneficial as she deems extended breastfeeding, Simpson has noticed behavioral differences between Amaya and Amirion that could be attributed to their differences in nursing. She tells PEOPLE that it's been “a lot easier” to break habits with her son, like getting him to sleep on his own.

“[Amaya] has a problem with sleeping in the bed. He doesn't. He sleeps in his own bed, he's super independent. If he cries, he just gets up and walks off,” she shares. Her daughter, on the other hand, is quite attached.

“For the breastfed one, she's stuck up my butt. Anytime she cries, I have to pick her up and I have to tend to her, put her on the boob and let it be like a human pacifier. It's been impossible to get her to drink cups and try things,” says Simpson. “So I would say it was easier with him.”

She continues, “I think it is harder to get your child to feel more independent because they're so used to having you on them and you being their comfort.”

Related: Olivia Munn Opens Up About Breastfeeding Struggles, Says She Felt Like Her 'Body Was Failing'

Simpson herself was never breastfed due to her parents’ struggles with addiction, she tells PEOPLE. “So that's what made me want to support my kids even more on what they needed,” she continues. “That's part of why I had breastfed for so long, is because my mom couldn't even try to do it for me.”

As is common when sharing candidly about parenthood on social media, she’s been met with both support and criticism for her way of caring for Amaya. However, considering her IUGR diagnosis at birth, it’s surprising that some of the most negative comments regard the child’s size.

“I get a lot of comments that she's obese, and she's not obese. I took her to the doctor and videotaped the entire [appointment], the doctor saying that she wasn't obese,” says Simpson. “People think they know what a height and weight chart is, like, ‘Oh, you're 99% fatter than people.’ No, they're 99% taller than kids their age.”

Since Simpson is petite, she believes some of her viewers’ concerns about Amaya’s size come from incorrect assumptions about their family in general.

“I'm a really small person and they think that dad should be a small person without even seeing him,” she tells PEOPLE. In her January TikTok, Simpson detailed the differences between her and Amaya’s father Jermaine, 22.

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“She did not get her genetics from me. She got them from her dad’s side. Her dad’s side is like [6-foot-2]. They’re really, really, really, really tall,” she explained. “Any questions that you guys have asked, believe me, I’ve asked her doctor, and they’re not concerned.”

She notes to PEOPLE that she’s even gotten criticism at home, with some family members expressing similar remarks about Amaya.

“Even my grandpa, he said he didn't buy her anything from the store because she looked too big. So it's always been, ‘Oh, you need to quit breastfeeding her because she's big,’” says Simpson, who lives in Edinburgh, Indiana. “But breast milk doesn't make a kid fat.”

Such comments make Simpson especially upset since says she grew up under familial scrutiny about her own weight, with people telling her how she should and shouldn’t eat. Those comments have ultimately shaped her approach to parenthood as a whole.

“I was going to let my kids decide when they're ready for things. Even the whole potty training thing, trying to normalize potty training past the age of two,” she says, noting that both of her kids still prefer to use diapers, though she is encouraging them to use the toilet as time goes on.

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“You let your kid do it in their own time. If you force it on them, you're going to create an emotional thing and they're just not going to like it,” Simpson adds.

It’s taken a lot of personal courage for Simpson to open up online since she says she deals with anxiety in general. But she hasn’t seen any other pages trying to normalize extended breastfeeding the way she does, and the parents who can relate motivate Simpson to keep sharing.

“There are literally 13,000-plus moms that have come forward on my page saying, ‘Oh, I'm breastfeeding my four-year-old. And I'm breastfeeding my three-year-old. And we stopped at four. We stopped at three and a half,’” she says. “I'm not the only one that does it, but I would think that I'm the only one that shares it, if that makes sense.”

Though her doctors have said Simpson can continue breastfeeding until her child is 5, she says she doubts Amaya will continue for that long.

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“We've tried to stop breastfeeding her, but … the doctors say it's an emotional thing now, and I don't want to get like mastitis by cold-turkeying her,” the TikToker tells PEOPLE.

Once again, it’s just another part of parenting that Simpson will approach with her kids’ needs as the first priority: “I'm just going to let her self-wean,” she says. “I'm into the whole self-weaning process.”

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