Can't seem to change the way I think about BF

[twiglett]

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Nope - got to disagree twiglett - breastmilk is natural & healthy for a child to have for as long as it wants. In fact - Breastmilk is now acknowledged to reduce likelihood of childhood obesity - junk food causes it.

To defend poor twiglett, she said right at the start her feeling 'doesn't make sense' and she didn't want to be slated!! She doesn't want to feel the way she feels, because her head tells her it's wroong - I am quoting.

I think your attempts to justify your feelings won't stand up, though, twiglett. But heavens, many of us have gut feelings about all sorts of things that come from goodness knows where. I have a member of my family who has a 'thing' about buttons - she hates touching them unless they are attached to clothes. She feels a bit sick. It's not a phobia, just an intense dislike.

There's no nutritional rationale or any other sort of rationale for putting a limit on breastfeeding age. The physiological age of weaning is about seven ( you can check this on the web - look for the work of bio-anthropologist Kathleen Dettwyler) and children wean physiologically by gradually reducing the amount of breastmilk they take over years and years and it sort of tails off.

But this is culturally unacceptable in many societies inclduing our own.

Sorry, Katherine not Kathleen.

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Twiglett, I share your views and I've been trying to pin down why. I think it's to do with enjoying my dd getting bigger, turning from baby to little girl. I think my mum tried to keep me dependent and in her control for a long, long time (not through breast feeding she never did that)my response has been to be hyper aware of not babying my dd too much and letting her move from stage to stage. In a way I'd feel like I was stopping her growing up and tying her to me if I'd carried on bf. But I must stress that this is just me looking to rationalise my behaviour - nothing to do with why others choose to do what they do.

twiglett - I just meant a 2 year old is pretty helpless regarding needing nappies, limited speech, constant supervison and so on. I do agree though that they are toddlers not babies, my dd is VERY grown up, more so than her brother but maybe that's girls for you Bit confused as you said originally past 12 months, then you said a 2 year old so that is actually a whole year older??

Still not sure about using the walking/talking/pulling criteria. Lets face it kids can walk at under a year but they are hardly grown up, also with pulling, well yes babies can pull things like things off the table, your purse out your bag etc.. all pretty much as yet unconstructive and very limited in independence. So when looking at these 'cut off' points they don't actually make any sense... so I guess it does all come down to a funny sort of belly button feeling.

Personally I think its down to what one feels as being a separation between your body and your childs and in this society (in the majority) we just feel that this separation should be way lower than in others. I actually find it odd that some people stop breastfeeding at 6 months for example to have this 'separation' but then spend most of the time holding their babies and wiping their bottoms/faces etc... we do all of this till they are toilet trained which is anywhere between 2 and 4ish... which seems like a good time to stop breastfeeding!

Incidentally K Dettwyler has argued that in some societies the onset of adult teeth is a time for stopping breastfeeding, ie between 5-7. I guess this why the first set are called 'milk teeth'.

Well, my one year old daughter gets a mixture of my milk and cow's milk. And actually, I'll admit it - someone has to! - I do think I breastfeed her as much as for me as for her. She's my second child, and I think of her as my baby, and I like the cuddles, and yes I like the fact that I can do this and nobody else can (dd1 is so besotted by her daddy that this is a big consolation; I do suspect dd2 will stop being as attached to me when I stop b/fing her!). I don't particularly like admitting that I feel like that, but I do.

Don't care for the baby cow analogy myself. Yes cows milk is a good food but some people do genuinely have problems with it due to allergies which is nothing to do with being a vegan.

Anyway if something is good for you at age 1, its not going to stop being good for you at age 2 is it?

motherinferior - don't feel like that! It would be pretty silly if we didn't enjoy breastfeeding - makes biological sense to enjoy doing something that benefits your child (and yourself) absolutely no shame... I feel just the same, just didn't mentioned it as I took it as read that I enjoy it.

LOL twigglett ... I too have a 'thing' about bellybuttons ... eeeeeeeewwwwwww!!!!

I felt very similar to Twiglett about feeding past the age of 1. I felt 'each to their own' and 'whatever floats your boat' type feelings when I heard of people breastfeeding for a long time but also thought 'why bother when they can have cow's milk?'. The thought of any child of mine breastfeeding past the age of 8 months has grossed me out too.

HOWEVER ... I am now in serious danger of being a long term b/fer with DD! She is 5 months now and I just can't imagine NOT feeding her! She's huge too and I am beginning to get some looks now (she is the size of an average 11 month old according to the nurse at her 5 month check yesterday). The thought of giving up in only 3 months from now is awful and makes me sad .
Even DH asked me the other day when I was going to give up as he said he was sick of cuddling my breastpads
I don't know what I will do to be honest. The thought of breastfeeding a toddler grosses me out but the thought of giving up any time soon is inconceivable ...
Very interesting debate ...

DS is 7.5 months and bf (guess he would be or I wouldn't be on this thread!) Before he was born I knew I wanted to bf, but really wasn't sure how long I intended to do it for.

At the time I was planning to go back to work at 6 months and so probably thought I'd try to get that far. Now I am going back to work when DS is 9 months so I have extended myself a bit.

At the moment though I can't really imagine bf past a year. Like twiglett, I don't know why either. Maybe I have been conditioned by bf attitudes among those I know. Of babies I know locally around DS's age, only 1 is still being bf. I am already feeling weird for still bf DS.

So I shall wait and see.

I definitely enjoy the one bf I give my 2 year old dd every morning - it's a lovely peaceful cuddle time. But more than anything I'm still feeding her because I think that human babies were designed to get human milk and I want my dd to wean herself naturally when she's good and ready not at some arbitrary cut off point imposed by society.

This thread has been really interesting and a bit sad - it certainly confirms my experience that I got no criticism of bfing in the early months, but that from 6 months the comments start and often the most ardent campaigners for weaning are women who breastfed themselves. It's such a shame. All my instincts say that extended feeding is what we were designed to do - the health benefits for women of extra years breastfeeding are documented (lower risk of breast and ovarian cancer, lower risk of osteoporosis), and the benefits for kids are there too they're just not as big as the benefits they get in the early months. The WHO recommends feeding for "at least 2 years", and they make that recommendation based on scientific research.

Each to their own in the end - but I do think it's a shame there is such pressure on women who choose to continue feeding their babies beyond the first year.

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I just Eeeewwww and I can't even begin to imagine why. Although I have thought, what about if I had a huge row with my mother when I was in my teens ( I often did) and I could remember being breast fed??? Not tactful - Sorry!

Tik tok - I know a midwife who doesn't like buttons. I wonder if they are one and the same?

Twiglett - Doesn't matter about definitions anyway doesn't make it right or wrong about what age one should keep doing it. Its just a name, plenty babies can't walk let alone toddle at a year.

MrsDoolittle - why on earth would you have a huge row with your mother about being breastfed?????

The only cut off points are those created by yourself or your child. When you are no longer happy feeding, or your child decides to stop, it's time to stop. People shouldn't feel guilty that they've "only" fed for X months or they're "still" eeding at Y months.

I'm perfectly at ease with my decisions to stop at 12 and 14 months. DS2 really made the decision at 14 months when I went away for a couple of nights and he bit me when I tried to feed him on my return!

If you want to feed your 3 year old - so what? Just because it's not for me doesn't make it wrong. I wouldn't expect a "late" bf-er to berate me for stopping "early".

Eulalia - It was really nice yesterday that everyone just oput their thoughts about this subject and not tried to justify or quiz twiglett on this - I was thinking about it on the way home how no one had come on and even in the slightest way attacked her.

Sadly I got in this morning and now see that this is no longer the case - she was expressing a point and frankly I feel the same - its yucky and makes my skin crawl - and nothing you can say is going to change that and I actually feel sad now that she could not just express a point without getting the reply that she did - I couldn;t care less what you did in terms of breastfeeding your child and I am sure neither could Twiglett but I feel strobngly that she has the right to say what she thinks about extended breastfeeding on here.

Here here Twinkie!!

Remember that Twiglett did say "Can I just reiterate that I accept it is NONE OF MY BUSINESS how you feed your own child .. I'm just saying the concept is not one that sits easily with me."

I don't actually see any point in trying to pull holes in twiglett's argument, because I don't think she ever meant it to be an argument, she's just being honest about her feelings. We all have some kind of mental cut-off point, and this can change when it's our own child (I know mine did), but it's still something internal that we can't help. I can't see any point at all in trying to argue it out logically.

(Having said that I have to agree with twiglett though that the cow's milk argument makes no sense to me, even as a long-term breastfeeder- I just did it because it seemed to be what my children wanted, not because I was appalled at the alternatives)

motherinferior/eulalia - isn't enjoying breastfeeding partly hormonal anyway - that you release prolactin that makes you feel nice and relaxed when bfing - so enjoying bfing is a completely natural physiological response anyway?

Not for me MummytoSteven.

Although I did breastfeed my 3 (maximum 4 months) I was counting down the days until I could stop - I HATED breastfeeding with a passion - never enjoyed it at all

Looking back now that they are older (youngest off to school in Sept) I wish that I hadn't "wasted" their baby days getting myself so upset doing something that I hated. If I had my time again, I would probably have gone straight onto bottles, so that I could actually ENJOY their first months rather than be filled with dread every time they cried.

If enjoying breastfeeding is a natural response to hormones etc, then there was something seriously wrong with me

I'm abnormal, then I loathed breastfeeding for the first few weeks both times round and longed to stop with dd1. I do rather like it now. But I thought I'd come clean about some of the reasons why.

apologies and hugs to slinky! you managed at lot better than me with bfing - I bfed exclusively for two weeks, but then DS was hospitalised with jaundice, so did a bit of expressing/odd feed until 8 weeks then threw in the towel (after he was hospitalised I completely lost confidence in my ability to feed him myself). With the hormones thing I just meant that when everything is going well and you feel Ok with things I found that I did get a relaxed mellow feeling - but we are all
different. I only ever got that towards the end anyway - when DS knew that he would be getting a bottle soon anyway so he could relax when I was trying to bf. (After a 40 minute bf, he was taking 125 mls of formula, so that kind of spoilt the illusion that bfing was working out!) In the early days the hormone thing only really manifested itself in me feeling absolutely desperate to go back to sleep when doing the night feeds - feeling as if I needed matchsticks to keep me awake!

Thanks MummytoSteven