To ask for your thoughts on extended breastfeeding?

[awmamma]

Catching up on Teen Mom UK and watching the bit about Charlie telling Shannon it was weird to still be breastfeeding her 2.5 year old.

Is it really that weird?

Primates I have read wean at between 3 and 5 years of age.

@Uptheduffy that and the chronic sexualisation of breasts

Always makes me chuckle to myself when I see the picture of the woman breastfeeding in front of a giant Victoria’s Secret billboard ad and being asked to cover up! Oh the irony

@ThePolishWombat...Not for toddlers tho. That's why we develop teeth. So as they can eat food.

I suspect tabby means not a cultural norm. As saying it isn’t the biological norm is monumentally stupid.

Cross post!

Human children are born about 50% of the way through gestation compared to other animals. It’s the trade off of being bipedal- head wouldn’t fit through a mothers pelvis. So if anything, it would be more natural for a human child to breastfeed for longer than other great apes.

If I could have bf my DS (Cleft lip and palate) I'd have bf until whenever he naturally weaned off of it. It makes me sad he couldn't get enough suction to bf, I had just assumed I'd bf him as we didn't find out about the cleft palate until he was born.

It says something depressing to me about the state of education and critical thinking to me that people can knee-jerk reproduce a piece of cultural conditioning that is wildly illogical when given any examination, and feel that their argument is awesome and unassailable.

Children don't "need" beds, or backpacks with Paw Patrol, or toys of any kind, really - they can make do with sticks and stones. Since when do we aim to give children only what they "need", and consider it a bad thing to give them something they don't strictly speaking need? And if we're going to talk about need, toddlers self-evidently need human milk more than they need cows milk.

@TabbyMumz so you’re saying that once a child has teeth they don’t need to breastfeed?
Both of mine had teeth at 16 weeks

Your reasoning here is fundamentally flawed, and every single health organisation in the world disagrees with you!

i find it weird and somehow not right to have a child, not a baby, hanging off your breast

Oh dear, you have no idea how breastfeeding actually works.

Of course it is the biological norm. You might want to apply some thinking.

Breast fed my first for 2.5 years and forced weaning (sadly) because me and DH were struggling to conceive Baby number 2.

Baby number 2 has just turned two years old and is still a regular breast feeder and I have no plans to stop in the near future,

I shouldn't be critical actually as the formula companies have done such a number on us all that bfing has become the thing that's weird, instead of the thing that's natural.

But this thread is not discussing breastfeeding per se, but rather the breastfeeding of toddlers and, in some cases, school aged children. None of these would be drinking bottles of formula if they were not still breastfed.

But this thread is not discussing breastfeeding per se, but rather the breastfeeding of toddlers and, in some cases, school aged children. None of these would be drinking bottles of formula if they were not still breastfed.

True. But they would probably be drinking cows milk.

We live in a society where milk that is meant for baby cows is considered more normal to drink than milk that is meant for humans.

None of these would be drinking bottles of formula if they were not still breastfed

No, but the vast majority of them would be drinking cups (or, in many cases, bottles) of cows' milk or a nondairy milk, and a large number of them would also have dummies. Formula wouldn't do them any harm (and in fact formula companies are vigorously selling formula to older toddlers in the form of "stage 3 and 4" milk, most people simply make the switch to cows milk for cost reasons).

Bottle-feeding formula at all is a very artificial synthesising of breastfeeding. As are dummies, and for that matter thumb-sucking in toddlers and small children is a copying of breastfeeding to self-soothe.

Formula is expensive, so most people naturally switch to a cheaper alternative once it's no longer strictly necessary. Bottles are also problematic for teeth (and hygiene, for that matter). Breastfeeding is free and does not damage teeth.

What it boils down to when people say "but they don't need it" and "it's just a comfort blanket" and "it's more for the mother" is that they basically think breastfeeding at all, ever, is weird and sexual and dirty and inappropriate, or whatever cultural conditioning they've picked up, but they know that view is indefensible and daft, as well as completely not supported by the science. So they set artificial and arbitrary limits around when it's OK - it's OK just for a newborn, or it's OK until they have teeth, or it's OK because when they're tiny they really need it for food, or whatever. These boundaries are also helpfully shiftable if challenged. "It's ok if you're basiclly forced into doing it because it's better than formula, but it should be 100% strictly for the baby's benefit, and if you get anything out of it at all, your motives are dodgy and probably harmful". What a sad view.

Couldn't care less. If you choose to feed your kid until the day before they go to uni, have at it. Your body, your child, your choice.

cressida brilliant post. Absolutely spot on.

CeciliyP have you never seen toddler milk in the shops? "When it's time to move on from breastfeeding.." etc. There absolutely is a market for formula for toddlers.

When it's time to move on from breastfeeding.."

Which implies breast feeding is something that must be moved on from.....which is completely incorrect.

It’s underhanded marketing and another way to just downplay the importance of breast feeding and imply their toddler formula is superior to it.

You do see plenty of threads on here where someone mentions difficulties with BF and the phrase time to introduce a bottle or move on to formula appears. Obviously it's mums choice but the way it's presented as something routine that everyone dhou8do eventually shows how well the marketing has worked.

Everyone does

My phone is fucking weird

I don’t know snuggy I see lots of posts from people that are really struggling with bf but feel they aren’t allowed to give up, or that they are failures if they do being reassured that it’s perfectly ok to use formula if bf isn’t working for them.

I think it’s more of a reaction to the fact everyone is being told breast is best and yet there’s not enough support for people struggling, and none whatsoever for those that are considering changing to formula. So those for whom bf is a big struggle are being made to feel they’re letting their baby down. In which case they need reassurance from a parenting forum that actually it isn’t bad or wrong to try formula or a bottle.

Children tend to have comfort blankets, teddy bears, dummies etc when they are not breastfed on demand until they self wean. There is nothing wrong with that at all - but it is very strange and almost backwards to say (especially with a negative implication) that a breastfeeding child is "using breastfeeding as a comfort blanket" just as it is strange and the wrong way around to say that a baby is "just using you as a dummy" - children use dummies and comfort objects to replace the comfort they would (generations ago) have got at the breast. And that's great if it works better for a family - certainly it frees mum up a fair amount if she's not the sole source of comfort for the toddler. But it's also not wrong for her to be that (sole, main, joint, whatever) source of comfort if it is working for her.

No child, baby or toddler has ever "hung off" a breast - what a horribly antagonistic way to describe something.

It is absolutely relevant to formula companies, even though the children of the ages we are discussing would not be drinking formula, most likely. The issue is that before industrialisation and the aggressive marketing of formula, children breastfeeding for several years would have been the norm. Thanks to a combination of industrialisation, but mainly aggressive formula marketing practices, breastfeeding in those patterns has been disrupted and is no longer a cultural norm to the point that people seem to think it has never happened. When mothers do breastfeed, (which is more now than the past two generations) they do so using more bottle-like behaviours and patterns, they stop earlier, and the vast majority also supplement with formula. The formula industry and marketing practices still have an indirect effect on breastfeeding, even though obviously nobody watches a formula ad and suddenly changes their mind about breastfeeding which has previously been going perfectly well.

It's hard to get a good balance. Infant milk is a topic that so many of us have baggage with. I'm also not a fan of breast is best. I'd rather the message be about how most women are capable of producing enough breastmilk and have the right to be supported in doing so. I'll admit that's not very catchy.

The way I see it is I think women should be supported to make an informed decision on what they feel is best for them. Sometimes women feel BF isn't working when it's just that they don't have realistic expectations for baby behaviour for example. If they want to give up because it's affecting their mental health that's very different from wanting to give up because they believe they are harming their baby by continuing.

I think extended breastfeeding is creepy, and wonder what absence or insecurity the mother is trying to fill by doing it.

I think extended breastfeeding is creepy, and wonder what absence or insecurity the mother is trying to fill by doing it

I’ve come across your armchair psychology on other threads. It makes me wonder what absence or insecurity you’re trying to fill by doing it...