If you do 'attachment parenting'/BLW will you really let your child breastfeed until any age they do?

[porridgeisbae]

I just started watching this Dr. Phil episode.

If you do 'baby led weaning' or similar, would you really let your child breastfeed or suck on your boob to whatever age they want? Or would you have a cut off point really even if the child wanted to carry it on?

I'm aware that in other cultures they often breastfeed until an older age than we do.

I imagine it's largely down to personality over the mothers feeding choice.

Yes, it's a very normal part of development and indicates a secure attachment.

Sure. Breastfeeding dc aged nearly 3 at their request. Sometimes they ask in public and I'll agree if a suitable location. I've had multiple women approach me to say they are still breastfeeding at 3+ but keep it a secret. I bet it's really common.

We also coslept as it was easier. Dc sleeps through the night mostly in their own bed now without issues, can go to sleep without me there and I can go away for a few days without pumping.

I carried on with DS until he decided at about 18 months, stopped a feed at lunch time (nursery pick up as I worked ptime), then the morning and bedtime ones dropped too.

I still remember me getting a breast out and him pushing it away gently. A slightly sad moment - finishing that phase of the relationship. Also glad he had decided so I wasn't faced with making a decision further on. Knowing this was a step towards independence!

Yes I know a mum who stopped at almost 1yo, our children are the same age so almost 3 and it must seem like so long ago for her. She has another baby now and I'm still feeding the first one.

Not this again.

I didn't do 'attachment parenting' but I did 'do' natural term weaning (2.5 for Dc1 and 4.5 for DC2). My milk supply was incredibly robust, I travelled for work a lot and it just picked back up again on return.

I have an increased breast cancer risk also, and I am very happy it's diminished that risk somewhat.

Why does anyone care, unless you're shilling for Nestlé?

I do attachment style parenting.

Two of my children were formula fed (but co slept etc)

Two of my children were/are breastfed. The one until he was 22 months (I was 8 months pregnant with the next baby and dried up) and I'm still feeding my 4 and half year old, who also co sleeps.

Definitely not doing it for my benefit, I would quite like to stop! However, she likes it to reconnect after a day at school and bedtime, and I will continue to feed her and let her co sleep until she's ready. We tend to only feed now at bedtime and a quick five minutes after school now.

Using language like ‘suck on your boob’ when talking about breastfeeding is deliberately inflammatory.

I fed my son until he was 18 months old, by which time he was only having one feed at night. He was largely losing interest by then and weaning was incredibly easy. Had he wanted to continue or found weaning very difficult, I would have continued, because he was still very young, it was still benefitting him, and there isn’t anything more effective for offering comfort to babies and small children who want it.

The WHO recommends breastfeeding to at least 2 years old. Children lose their milk teeth at around 7 years old. It is always of nutritional, emotional and immunological benefit even beyond babyhood. Women should breastfeed for as long as they and their child are comfortable doing so, and anyone who wants to be snotty about it should ask themselves where that well of negativity is coming from and work on healing themselves.

OP, I'm curious, do you have children? I just wondered because a lot of your responses suggest very little experience of baby and toddler related topics and seem to be based on a very theoretical idea of what parenthood is like. I also remember assuming that I would stop breastfeeding when the child had teeth, which I assumed happened at some point before the first birthday and I also thought that stopping breastfeeding and starting food was something that happened all at once, I didn't realise that both usually continue alongside each other for several months (if not, indeed, years).

As several people have pointed out, BLW usually refers to a process of introducing solids in which you let the baby set the pace and usually give them pieces of ordinary food rather than mushing food into a puree and spoon feeding it to them according to a parent-led plan or schedule.

Stopping breastfeeding when the child wants to stop as opposed to the mother deciding is usually called self-weaning.

Breastmilk supply does not usually just randomly dry up. This can happen during the early weeks if supply has not been sufficiently established for various reasons (not all under mum's control) but it doesn't usually happen later on, basically as long as you keep feeding you can keep producing milk near indefinitely. In fact once supply has been established for a while it is remarkably elastic, you can stop feeding for several days if not weeks and still produce milk. It is also possible for a woman who has previously breastfed to induce breastfeeding again later on, apparently even post menopause. This was apparently done in many societies before formula milk was commonly available, for the purposes of sharing childcare. Many cultures have a word similar to "milk-sibling" meaning a person (usually a cousin or other relative) who was breastfed by the same woman, and there is a taboo in many of these cultures against future sexual contact/marriage between milk-siblings. It can be the case that the flow slows down and isn't particularly interesting to the child any more.

Women have many and varied reasons for choosing breastfeeding and it is not always to do with the health benefits, although this is often the reason that people automatically cite first, so it tends to show up as the most common reason on surveys. I think this is more of a cultural thing - it shows you what we value - we are supposed to make choices in parenting which are selfless and which benefit the child. Research shows that the most influential factor is generally what your own mother did. We want to do what feels familiar and normal to us, particularly in such an intimate act as feeding a baby.

I certainly never really found it unpleasant or annoying (except for the pregnancy related aversion) - and teeth are not an issue. Breastfeeding releases oxytocin which is a relaxing and feel-good hormone, so it can definitely feel good.

Nobody ever explains the "mothers are doing it for themselves" comment so my only assumption is that it is either so deeply cultural people who say it don't really have a reasoned understanding of what they mean, it is more just a feeling of going against the "mothers are supposed to make selfless choices in the interest of the child only" cultural value. Or they mean that the mother is infantilising the child, which only makes sense if you assume breastfeeding is only for tiny babies, which they often do think, so this makes sense (even though I totally disagree with it). And it's just nonsense anyway, I mean look at the overall parenting to see if she is infantilising or not, don't single breastfeeding out, it doesn't make sense. Or they mean that the mother is getting some kind of sexual thrill from breastfeeding, which is so disturbing and odd that I can only guess they are closet breastfeeding fetishists themselves or something.

I did EC with DS1 as well (but not the others). Ask me anything it is definitely not "just letting them poo on the floor" but poo on the floor happens, inevitably, at some point with young children just like it does with puppies.

Using language like ‘suck on your boob’ when talking about breastfeeding is deliberately inflammatory.

I'm sorry if some people didn't like it but I wasn't deliberately being inflammatory at all. I don't know anything about it so I assumed that some people might do it as comfort for a child even once their milk had run out.

I think I was unable to have children (had two miscarriages) and am nearly 47 now.

I'm pretty sure toddlers who are still breastfeeding are also eating normal food. I agree that it would be selfish (and probably very unhealthy) to exclusively breastfeed a child older than six months without any other food but I don't think that's what people mean when they say they are still breastfeeding their kids at 2, 3 or 4 years old.

Also, many pp have said they only bf in the morning and evening. Surely you don't believe they starve their kids between that? Or that they are carrying their 4 year old around in their arms all the time?

I weaned both my kids off breastfeeding when I went back to work so the first at 18 months and the second at a year but I had very little milk by that time so it had become very frustrating for them anyway.

Gosh you are horrible.

This thread really seems to bring out a lot of arseholes. Thankfully in real life people like this are too chicken to talk the way they do online.

I have my bany out of nappies often. Did the same with my first. I attachment parent and do blw. Dc1 fed until almost 4, currently still feeding dc2, 1.

I think having childless women on mumsnet is great it gives another often valuable perspective. However what is your interest in natural term breast feeding ? It seems an odd topic to post on.

FWIW I weaned DS around 8/9 months. He would have fed longer, small regret I didn't keep it going. Dd took a bottle so was mix fed. She refused it at about 6 months. They both absolutely loved solid food.

I'm interested in virtually anything, it's just how I am. I posted about it because of the bit of documentary I watched.

I get that. I get a sense of genuine curiosity from your post honestly. I like to discuss new topics and learn from people who have different experiences to me too. Just be aware that sometimes people do post things like this not from a position of curiosity, but because they have a specific view (e.g. everyone should breastfeed, or breastfeeding after X age is totally wrong) and they are sort of baiting for an opposite response specifically so that they can reply to it and go "Ha!! Gotcha!" and feel all smug and superior that they were right. It's not nice to be on the receiving end of that and it can make people a bit defensive/suspicious when genuinely curious posts come up, because the goady ones often start out with a sort of fake curiosity.

Sorry to hear about your miscarriages BTW.

Ah ok. Well I'm not particularly one of those people. What I asked is is it like, genuinely indefinite and the people doing it have no limit to when they themselves would decide to stop? From what people are saying (or admitting to, given there's a stigma about it) is about 7 is the upper limit so far from any PP when children tend to stop for themselves.

WHO recommends 2 and beyond, not until 2. That is the exact wording. Newspapers always get this wrong. It is see definitively not "until" 2.

There have been anthropological studies that generally put the top age as about 7, due to factors like adult teeth, duration of time offspring is reliant on mother compared to other primate species etc.

So I don't think it's a matter of some mothers thinking breastfeeding is "genuinely indefinite" so much as thinking their kid will stop when it is developmental natural in the same way as no one gets to decide when their child learns to walk or talk.

Assuming all things equal, milestones are reached naturally, within a loosely recognised timeframe, same goes for natural weaning.

My DD stopped at 3.4 years when I asked her if she wanted a song instead of boobie. I still have to sing it to her each night and she's almost 6. But this won't last for ever either.

I assumed that some people might do it as comfort for a child even once their milk had run out.

It's supply on demand so supply stops a few months after the child stops. I could still squeeze some milk out about 5 months after my last child stopping.

The milk changes over time to become thicker and more antibody dense - as a child is more likely to ask for comfort when poorly.

They believe that mammary glands are an extension of the immune system.

Which is also why women tend to suffer from more autoimmune diseases as our immune system is very different to male's.

Children can actually loose their ability to such properly (loose their latch) as their mouth changes and grows. They simply can't do it anymore. I remember the occasional mother reporting this around age 3-4 in my toddler bf peer support group.

Some can go longer. Some just loose interest.

Milk supply is in response to demand, so it won’t run out while a child is still feeding (save in some circumstances - interrupting events like pregnancy and illness can cause supply to fail).

Once a supply is established it’s generally very secure. I could go a couple of days without feeding my son at the end and it didn’t affect it. And when I stopped feeding him it took nearly a year for my supply to go completely.

I think the "would you continue indefinitely" is an interesting question too and it's definitely one I've seen come up on more AP orientated spaces, ie, where there's already a general acceptance of longer term breastfeeding and it's NOT seen as something inherently wrong/icky/weird. If you ever come across forums like that, it's an interesting discussion to read when it's not muddied by all the "Eeew if they can ask then they're too old!!" stuff.

However the answer seems to be clear - there are basically two schools of thought - one is simply continue until there is a problem on either side, no matter what age that is, if it's not an issue then it's not an issue, right?

The other is that it's really more of a theoretical issue than a real one, because nobody has ever heard of a child still breastfeeding into puberty, which is a clear line that most people feel is weird/inappropriate. And actually if you look at the ages children tend to self wean, it's usually somewhere around 2-4 years with a few outliers ranging up to about 7, everyone seems to agree that the outliers are so rare most people even heavily involved in the AP/breastfeeding community don't personally know anyone with that experience, and allegedly, biology eventually nixes it with the loss of baby teeth, which changes the shape of the jaw preventing older children from latching. I'm not aware of any studies backing this up, so no idea if it's true or not. But it definitely gave me an end point to keep in mind in terms of if it has not ended by then, that's when I'll stop.

I think it's difficult otherwise because how do you determine an end point to something that does feel totally arbitrary? Before I had children, I thought it was weird to BF past 12 months. But my baby of 11 months 364 days, and my baby of 12 months 1 day was fundamentally no different, they were exactly the same baby, so the idea that I had to stop made no sense, and I just carried on.

That is why I think I found it hard to say for example: "Ah yes, five. Five is the magic age at which they will be Too Old so I will stop." Because when I had an 18 month old, four/five year olds looked impossibly giant and grown up and probably not breastfeeding, but also I had already had that experience of thinking "Oh when they get to one that's a bit too old, I'll probably stop by then" and then when I got there I proved myself wrong because it was just totally normal, so how could I say as a mother of an 18 month old that I would definitely stop by five? I didn't know how I would feel at five. So I sort of fell into both "I'll stop if it becomes a problem or he can stop when he wants to" and "It's never likely to be a problem because I don't actually believe that it will continue indefinitely".

I think a lot of parenting advice is based on the idea that children want to stay little children forever and you have to force them to grow up and do more independent things because they are never going to want to, but I find this weird and not really true, they absolutely do want to, maybe not on the timescale that everyone expects them to but they get there eventually, and it's much nicer and easier if you do have the choice and it doesn't matter if you can just wait until they opt to do something on their own.

I'm sure it's an entirely positive thing, emotionally and physically, to breast feed for several years. I'm sure it's entirely natural and done all over the world. However it wasn't for me. I did breastfeed but stopped before one year. I just would have felt uncomfortable breastfeeding a toddler. I say this knowing it says more about me than anything else.

I breastfeed my three kids for years yes, so that I breastfed them at the same time. Towards 3-4,years, it’s not very often and mostly if hurt or tired.