I still breastfeed my 5 year-old

[TandemFeeder]

I’ve had another baby too so am now a tandem feeder. Happy to answer any questions.

Weaning is introducing nourishment other than milk and withdrawing the milk.
A child is fully weaned when it no longer has its Mother's milk.

I do understand what you're saying - that we regard weaning as the introduction of solid food, but extended BF'ers tend to refer to fully stopping BF as weaning - natural or child-led weaning.

Not in my country, India.

"suggested" to your four old? Crikey...

Oh so many reasons. Dummies don’t produce milk for a start. They don’t have immunological benefits. In fact they can be quite unhygienic. I can write a whole essay just in this one but it’s late now…

They’re not the same thing at all.

It isn’t a great idea for anyone , but especially a child , to routinely fall asleep at night having just had milk ( or anything with sugar in it ).
That’s because we don’t salivate much when we sleep so the sugar isn’t washed away & the mouth bacteria (which cause decay by converting sugar to acid ) can do their evil work damaging our teeth all night long.
The enamel tooth surface consists of an intricate crystal lattice , made up of various ions .
Acid ‘pulls ‘ negatively charged ‘hydroxyl ‘‘ions out of the enamel leaving ‘ ‘ holes ‘ ,initially far too small to be seen with the naked eye but which will get bigger & eventually allow the bacteria to tunnel into the tooth and cause a cavity if the process repeats every night .
It’s a v good idea to brush a child’s teeth with a (pea sized )bit of fluoride tooth paste last thing at night & get them to spit out excess afterwards but not to rinse or drink anything before going to sleep .What then happens is that strongly negatively charged fluoride ions are attracted into the enamel lattice to replace any hydroxyl ions that have been ‘pulled ‘ out by acid & can heal any early decay before it gets a chance to get established.
I bf my kids last thing at night until they were around two and a half / eighteen months & used to put a v small smear of toothpaste in their lips without waking them …

Had never heard of ‘dry nursing.’ I’d have thought there’s no better opportunity to wean than during that period if there’s no milk… Not saying you or anyone should have btw but I think I would have used that opportunity then.

It's not common to eastern world either.

The posters saying, oh I breast fed DC till they were 4 or 5 and they don’t even remember it - are you absolutely sure they don’t remember it? They might just really really not want to admit to remembering it.

Y’see my typing is starting to deteriorate now…

I think I’ve covered everybody’s questions. Apologies for any that I missed.

Thanks to everybody who made positive and thoughtful contributions. 40 pages of responses in less than 8 hours is surely pretty impressive!

Hopefully at least one somebody somewhere will have taken away something of benefit. Time for me to hit the sack now. Night everyone. x

"dry nursing"?? I've heard it all.. just stop! Your body has moved on, allow your toddler, you can still be close, god knows my baby stayed co sleeping far longer than is necessary so I'm no parental angel but it was for me, I didn't want him away from me

It's a possibility - I would be wary of speaking about BF in the real world because as this thread shows some people are very rude and aggressive about those who BF - so with that in mind it is very possible that adults wouldn't want to be open about their childhood experience in case they are treated badly by uneducated people who have over sexualized views of BF

This thread shows that people are happy to be rude to anyone who does something different to their own experience. You seem very resilient OP. I think it's good to talk about these things. While later BF is unusual, it is not 'wrong' and I think it's truly awful to shame women as so many have tried to do here, just because it's outside their own experience.

I really don’t like the references on here to ‘uneducated people’. It sounds like punching down. Breastfeeding is already closely linked to class and comments like these are badly judged.

Indeed! It's absolute lunacy at a minimum.

Nothing I want to know about that!

Sound slike your jealousy is at play here. Do you think your warped views played a factor in making your brother mistakingly feel BF was abusive. Or do you think your mum was abusive

Either way your family situation is not equivalent to the many natural living families that BF

Uneducated about BF not general education

To be fair the abuse to people who BF on this thread has been awful

Well for one it's BREASTFEEDING not it feeding calling breasts tits is weird

You seems odd and overtly sexualized
Maybe it's your weird over sexed family views that screwed up your brother.

I have a clear memory from when I was 3yo and I was only telling my mum recently that I think I can remember something at 2 too but I’m not sure if I saw a photo of this ‘memory’ or something as it does seem very young. But certainly the memory at 3yo is clear.

I should have clarified I don’t mean memories of breastfeeding!

People need to remember this.

I was bf my dd sitting at a bus stop one afternoon and this woman told me it was disgusting! Her 4 year old dd was drinking coke from a plastic bottle😂.