Breastfeeding DD(4)

[Pumpkinspicedmum]

I have a DD(4) and DS(18 months). I have always wanted to breastfeed them until they wean naturally and always assumed this would be between 18 months and 2 years.

My DD is showing absolutely no desire to give up the boob and currently feeds first thing in the morning and again at some point in the evening, so only twice a day. I am more than happy with this as it obviously brings her comfort. However, DH has made it known to me that he thinks this is wrong and that I should be making her stop. He is very much of the opinion that she is too old and I should be putting boundaries in place. He has admitted he feels embarrassed about the situation and has asked for me to feed DD in private as he doesnt want to see it.

AIBU to insist on letting her feed until she is ready to wean naturally or should I make her stop? I am also worried that she'll get jealous if she sees DS still feeding. She is also still very attached to her dummy, something that also bothers DH. Any advice from anyone who has been through similar would be appreciated as it's a real bone of contention in our marriage at the moment. TIA

It's one of those things that most people know, the fact your dentist was surprised an an expert on teeth should give you a fair idea 🙄😒

I think by 4 it’s really time to treat the child’s father as an equal instead of the inferior parent. You’ve had a long time to be the special one but it will be in everyone’s interests for him to be able to parent her in all situations.

The fact that your DD uses both dummy and breasts to comfort at age 4 indicates she has a very strong attachment to sucking and it might not be realistic to wait for her to give it up ‘happily’. I’ve known adults who are still thumb sucking or chewing on their collars.

I literally am no expert, but ime I think babies usually naturally stop around 1-2, suddenly they don't care. I'd look into stopping one feed, then another. Or maybe just go cold turkey, there must some good info out there on how to do it. At least at 4 she's old enough to understand that she's old enough to stop, with the baby you could propose it like a big sister thing

It’s a no from me personally.

Just because your body can still produce milk, I don’t think it’s something that you need to keep on giving her. A 4 year old will be starting school soon so she’s not exactly a toddler rather a young child.

Once your DS no longer becomes interested I’d say just wrap it up for both of them. A dummy at that age is so ridiculous that I won’t even comment much on that. I do think your husband is allowed to have an opinion that DD is too old but to ask you to feed her in private is quite shitty

It wouldn’t be my choice and I find the faux wide-eyed ‘but why would it be a problem’ from some posters deliberately obtuse and rather silly, not to mention the casually racist call out to entirely unspecified and completely homogenous ‘other cultures’….. but it’s your and your child’s choice. It’s not ok for your husband to tell you he’s embarrassed by it and insist you do it in another room. He needs to support you both as long as this lasts.

Where do these figures come from? I’ve heard them bandied about many times by lactation support groups etc but I’ve never seen any reliable data to support them. I’m not against extended BFing but I think it’s always wise to question the source of “interesting” statistics like this.

I honestly don’t care how long you choose to BF as it is a personal decision but your husband is just as much a parent as you are and at the age of four this is very much a parenting decision rather than a health or developmental issue. Your husband is as much your child’s parent as you are so I think he should get a voice in deciding what is best for her.

Whatever you want is okay and your choice. I do however think that the global age for weaning being higher is due to much of the globe having poor access to clean water, food etc. I’d hazard a guess that if everyone had access to these things the global average for weaning would be much lower. I imagine if clean water is an issue and food was scarce I’d have wanted to breastfeed mine for an extended time as it would be logistically easier and safer for them.

https://www.healthline.com/health/breastfeeding/extended-breastfeeding

Still breastfeeding a 7 year old here! Not something I expected when she was a baby - I thought you stopped at six months but didn’t feel right to stop. But since about the age of two we only fed before bed and first thing in the morning. Now it’s very occasional and only for a very short time- she is very nearly weaned. Just something that happened gradually. Hardly anyone knows that she still feeds - it’s not something she thinks to talk about at school although she is aware it’s not the cultural norm. She is a normal child with no problem fitting in at school. I suspect it’s actually more common than people realise (although I accept 7 is at the upper end of the scale!) as with older children it’s nearly always done at home and no reason for others to know about it. My daughter has only lost two milk teeth and we have talked about adult teeth meaning she will no longer breastfeed.

This is a perfect summary of it.

I planned on letting my kids self wean. My oldest was 3-1/2 though when I found myself wearing out. I kept pushing but I finally had to admit it was over for me. So at not quite four, I told her “You know, my body is going to stop making milk eventually.” Cue her shocked what do you mean reaction. “Yeah, you’re big and so you don’t actually need it anymore. Since you don’t need it, I’ll eventually stop making it.”
We talked about trying to go to sleep without so much nursing - nurse for 10ish minutes then asleep cuddling. I also stopped offering (but never refusing completely). One day I realized she hadn’t asked in awhile and I knew she never would again. I was feeling so awful for ending it before she chose, but it ended up painless for both of us and quicker than I expected. I think she was also ready developmentally, but it was so ingrained it never crossed her mind to stop.
I believe that you don’t need to wean unless either of you want to, but you should know it might not be as hard on her as you expect if you do it as a gentle transition. I will agree with some others though that you need to make sure she is able to handle being the big girl she is. (As in - Can she handle going without if you aren’t present and instead having a cup or milk or simply none at all?)

All of my children naturally weaned, my second youngest DD was 4 and still feeding.
I was definitely ready to stop. There was a younger sibling and I felt a bit drained especially in the evenings. Various friends and relatives were disapproving but my husband was supportive so the disapproval wasn’t really a factor. I’d just arrived at the fed up of it stage myself. If you are not there yet I’d say follow your instincts, breastfeeding isn’t about nutrition alone. If your child needs you and you’re happy, carry on.
I suggested to DD a stopping date when it was her sisters first birthday a couple of weeks hence. We would stop then and she would just have a story at bedtime. It was really easy tbh, more so than I thought it would be. If she had been distressed I would have re-evaluated but she was fine and we had our last very special breastfeed the day before her sisters Birthday. She never even asked after that.

I breastfed my children as long as I could. My eldest self-weaned when I got pregnant and my milk presumably changed. My youngest dropped to night feeds only and I slightly forced a stop at the point I had my first covid jab, meaning he would have been 3.5.

I wanted to respond to the reply above which described extended breastfeeding as 'unusual and unnecessary' - even though it might not be needed from a nutrition perspective, it is a source of comfort and creates extra antibodies, helping both mum and child fight off illness (helpful with transition through nursery/school) as a bonus it also decreases the mums chances of breast cancer over her whole lifetime. There may well even be other benefits that are not yet fully understood or appreciated.

OP, could your DS be “much less interested” than your DD because he has always had to share breastfeeding with your older child? He has never been able to be the only one having that bond with you, whereas your DD did for years….

My own opinion is that 4 is far too old for breastfeeding. She's a child, not a toddler or a baby. You're the adult, so you need to impose the boundaries and stop it.

Or could it be a different personality type? My DS was also much less interested. The wide busy world was far too exciting to stay still and breastfeed. He self weaned just after he turned two.
DD had to be discouraged from carrying on at 5 and a half because I just couldn't do it any more.
She was the youngest. So nothing to do with having to share.

The reason I suspect she kept on as long as she did was the comfort. We relocated when she was 3, which she found very difficult, there were marital issues which made home life stressful for all of us and then my husband left and she started school. She needed the comfort of the familiarity and nurture of bf in the most primal way. Nobody outside me and her knew about it, maybe DS, but he didn't pay much attention. When she spent time with her dad she was fine without it, but she always returned to it when back with me.

In the end I started to cut feeds short, or put her off until 'later'. She was only feeding at bedtime by then, so I adjusted our routine slightly so it wasn't just 'the next thing on the list' and eventually she stopped. The last few weeks she'd have it maybe once or twice a week then she stopped. It was a joint effort.

She's older now but still talks fondly about breastfeeding. She still takes comfort from the experience in memory. I'm just glad that I gritted my teeth and kept going when it was something she needed so badly at that time.

I can't comment on dummies as never used them, but I possibly wouldn't try and stop both at the same time or you may end up with an inconsolable daughter.

Make the decisions that are right for you and your family. I suspect the dummies will be a harder habit to break because they're available to her whenever, so maybe do those first? Then, when you're ready to stop bf, change your routines a bit so there's no slot for bf.

I can also recommend the fb group mentioned. V supportive bunch.

With DC of similar age we had a ‘bye bye boob’ party with cake, balloons and a toy they really coveted. We talked about it for 2 weeks beforehand. There was only one night of upset after that and then no more. This might help with having a younger sibling still breastfeeding? Make it a big deal that only the sibling who’s stopping gets to experience as older?

I can't help wondering why it's said to be "fine... perfectly natural" etc to breast feed until 4 / 5 / 6 etc, yet nobody would claim that for bottle feeding.

I'm with OPs husband, time to pack it in.

Agree, GodspeedJune!

Soontobe60 - Why are first teeth called 'milk teeth'? At what biologically normal age do 'milk teeth' start falling out and become replaced with adult teeth? Is it all a coincidence that natural term weaning and losing milk teeth occur naturally around the same time?

I think perhaps it is a little like other major developments in a child's life where they need support to move on to the next stage. At 4 it is probably now time to be helping prepare her for school etc, meaning no dummy and no brrastfeeding. As with other things, potty training for example, it is alright for different children to do them at different ages, but often these don't happen without some encouragement. I also think you, as the adult, need to have a think about whether she really needs comfort in these ways or are there new ways you could help her find?

The dummy needed to go like 2 years ago.
If i try to picture my DS at 4 with a dummy, it looks very very wrong.
Please just throw it in the bin NOW.

Totally agree with this. I weaned Dd at just gone 3, I wanted my body back! Took less than a week and since then has never asked to be bf/missed it in the slightest. I’m sure if I hadn’t gently encouraged she’d still be wanting to now at 6. Which is absolutely fine for some but I couldn’t do it personally.

I am totally for breastfeeding as long as possible but it sounds like your decision making as a parent lacks confidence. Not all children self wean and the fact your 4 year old has a dummy sounds like you are too afraid to make decisions that upset your child. Your job is to parent, not to avoid upsetting them.

@VintedoreBay

I've asked. But no one has answered.

Which society or culture breastfeed children (as a norm) until 7 or older?

My kids didn't start losing baby teeth until they were about 9!

Did you bf until they had all their adult teeth?

If not, why not?

Agree 7 does seem too old. In fairness bottle feeding isn't natural or best for baby so it's not surprising that doesn't carry on, bottle feeding is very bad for teeth.

I find the desire for ‘self weaning’ around breastfeeding quite odd, because there’s not very many things where we put the child’s ‘decision’ on a pedestal and give them full control. We decide to introduce solids, the baby doesn’t self wean on to food, we decide to transition them from a cot to a bed, we tell them when they need to brush their teeth and how long, we chose the healthy meals, we decide an appropriate bedtime etc. There are loads of things that if left to entirely self regulate toddlers and younger children would make terrible decisions.

I find it interesting that most people think the dummy should be removed, so we aren’t waiting for self weaning with that, but with breastfeeding it’s different which I just don’t get.
I do think global statistics on BF are totally irrelevant. These are places that don’t have full access to clean water or food.

At the end of the day I think it’s totally appropriate for the mother to make a call on breastfeeding. You say you don’t want to do it, so just stop. There’s no need for it, you don’t need to feel guilty for stopping, you aren’t taking away anything beneficial or necessary. It would be good for her to learn more age appropriate calming techniques.