I found, that once you tell one of these people, quite without apology, to take their opinion and shove it up their ... , then the comments generally stop pretty quickly.

I have zero patience for this kind of crap, and TBH, I never understood why people pull out the "Oh, I am still BF because I don't want to wash bottles" or "It's cheaper" lines, when what they really want to say, "You know what? **** off, because you are clearly an ignorant fool"... So I pretty much say what I think - I don't do the passive, apologetic, meek stuff. DD2 is now almost 3, still breastfeeding, and the only people who ever comment now are those who don't know me well enough not to.

Congratulations on making it as far as you have, it is a great achievement! Hope you can continue as long as you wish to.
Now I say exactly what I think. I went viral for my thoughts on breastfeeding so people are well aware my opinion. But when I had my first, I was freshly 21, I didn't know I'd still be feeding at 12months let alone 3yrs or through a pregnancy or tandem feeding, all my friends and cousins were similar ages, uni students with as little clue as me and I wasn't confident or sure of myself so it was just easier to frame it in ways they would instantly get and move on. And it was all true, I loved breastfeeding for the convenience, being able to lay down mid afternoon with a baby is brilliant, settling any place, always with me at the perfect temp, those are things that I appreciated about breastfeeding before I learnt more and still do.

It might seem a disservice short term but it helped me through a difficult time when I was figuring things out to have ways that shut down an argument I wasn't prepared for. And it allowed me to grow into my opinions and now be able to stand up loud and proud.

A lot of people are fighting an uphill battle with themself too, I knew intellectually I was doing the right thing for us but I never saw breastfeeding, nobody in my family did it, my friends were all prechildren aged, pop culture isn't much help so I felt self conscious and weird and standing alone. And as a new, young, unplanned parent (trifecta of targetability for helpful advice) there was no way I was ready to fight that tide alone. Some people would have been, that's great but not me, I was definitely a meek passive person in many ways.

So I get it if people aren't ready to just tell people to **** off. All start somewhere.