[VIDEO] Mother, 51, Defends Right To Breastfeed Her Five-year-old in Public

The Australian belly dancer, Al Musa who practices extended breastfeeding, where a mother allows the child to carry on feeding until they say they are ready to stop still breastfeeds her daughter in public, whenever she asks for milk.

She follows in the footsteps of Jamie Lynne Grumet, the 26-year-old Los Angeles mother who astounded people around the world when she posed on the cover of Time magazine with her four-year-old suckling from her bare breast. See more pictures and video after the cut...

As her daughter celebrates her fifth birthday this month, Al Musa, from New South Wales, spoke to New! magazine about how she couldn't care less what her critics think.

She has said she will allow her daughter to breastfeed until the age of 10, if that's what she wants.

'I believe it helps boost her immune system. To this day, she is very rarely ill and her temperament is calmer and more relaxed than the other children,' she says.

Maha stopped breasting her two previous children, Kailash, 16, and Tariq, 13 when they were two.

Jamie Lynne Grumet, Time magazine's breastfeeding cover star from May 2012

Grumet also defended her actions, talking of the health and emotional benefits of extended breastfeeding after appearing on the cover of Time Magazine.

She said she thought it was the image itself that people found hard to deal with, rather than the practice of extended breastfeeding.

'This isn't how we breastfeed at home,' she said in regards to the photograph, which captures the child standing on a small chair in order to take hold of her breast in his mouth.

'It's more of a cradling, nurturing situation [at home]. I understand what they're [the advocates] saying,' she said.

The mother, who said Aram is in fact 'self-weaning right now', admitted that she 'did understand' that the cover shoot was intended to spark controversy.

'We knew exactly what we were going to get into,' she said. 'I felt like our family was one of the better ones to handle this because of my mom's own personal breastfeeding.'

Ms Grumet was breastfed by her own mother until the age of six.