Just when thought we found a breastfeeding star.

[kkdmom]

ho-hum.

Long term breastfeeding is an evolutionary survival mechanism - babies in the past who self weaned early would have had less chance of survival. Our babies are no different from babies born 250000 years ago - they're creatures of instinct, and their instinct is to breastfeed long into early childhood, if they're given free access to the breast. When we choose to prematurely wean them we're thwarting an instinctive and healthy behaviour. That's not to say that all women SHOULD breastfeed beyond what they feel happy to to, I just think that it's sometimes worth looking at this from another perspective.

I know many people feel their babies self weaned - like thesuburbandryad, I wonder in how many instances this self weaning is actually a nursing strike (a term most mothers have never heard) which is met with a sigh of relief by a mum who actually would quite like to move on from bf and is welcoming of what seems like a natural chance to stop. There's also the issue of babies coming to prefer bottles over the breast - and how many babies get to six or seven months without EVER getting a bottle? Most bf babies of six months plus are mixed fed and many have been on solids since four months. How does that affect breastfeeding in the long term? I agree that being pregnant again can affect feeding - my 13 month old rejected the breast when I was pregnant with my 3rd and on a very strong course of antibiotics. I accepted that it was the end of breastfeeding for this particular child but I now wonder if he would have gone back on the breast if I'd encouraged him gently over the couple of months that followed.

I think it's also worth remembering that if we were bf as nature probably intended us to (ie, little and very, very often, plus much later weaning onto solids than we do now) then we probably wouldn't have been pregnant again much before our babies were a year old, so perhaps babies much under a year self weaning off the breast during pregnancy does make evolutionary sense.

"So why couldn't she have just kept her mouth shut rather than quoting incorrect information about leaking and stopping at 6 months."

I thik this is a bit harsh tbh. Leaking was obviously her experience, so to say it is incorrect is, well, er, incorrect. And charlotte didn't say that everyone should top at 6 months, she said that she was pleased to stop at 6 months, having achieved the guidline age (which it is - people are told to aim for 6 months ex bf).

I do think she is being given a very rough ride for simply telling the truth about her experience.

I have bf both my dds (dd1 ex until 4 months, then mix fed until 11 months when she self weaned - yes, it does happen pre 12 months) and dd2 ex bf until 6 months, and just finishing feeding er this week (she's 16 months, and, like Charlotte, I just want the leaking to stop and to get my body back)

It is only due to multiple food intolerances in the family that I have fed dd2 this long - she would have been happy to stop at around the 10 month mark - once she noticed that her sister got raisins for snacks for eg, instead ofmilk! As it is, she scaled right back, and has, for the last couple of months only been having one feed a day anyway...

nope, sorry Sabire. I know it would be nice if my experience was what you think it was but actually it was exactly as I've expressed it...

She didn't get her body back for long if she's pregnant again already!

Ditto, margotandjerry (we posted earlier at the same time but you were more succinct than me LOL)

hear hear lululemonrefuser! (are you lulumama under a new alias?)
i think charlotte was just being honest about her OWN experiences, and bfing is not all a bed of roses. in fact if more people were honest about bfing then perhaps women wouldn't be so quick to give up, as they wouldn't have that sense of failure that comes from feeling like you must be doing it 'wrong'. i continued with bfing DESPITE the advice given to me in hosp ('it should be compltely painless if you're doing it right'is the classic). also the emotional side of bfing can be just like lululemonrefuser says. to me charlottes comments reassure me that i'm not alone in feeling like i want my body back sometimes.

I got my body back but I wish I could have got another one back.

Also, I actually preferred having my body at the service of my DD to having my clothes constantly smeared with banana as they are every day

I too find the "oh, I bet it was a nursing strike" coments a bit patronising - none of you know me, or witnessed dd2 screaming to get down and have raisins not milk...

I too have carried on struggling to feed her (she's another one who steals her sister's drinks, instead of wanting bf), and she has been losing interest in her (last remaining)morning feed recently, but I am sure, on reflection, that you are all right after all, and I know nothing about bf, and nothing about my daughters. It must be a nursing strike after all - people on MN said so.

No - I am not lulumama (and in fact feel embarrassed about that - I didn't know she existed when I signed up and chose my name - I should probably change it ...)

Anyway - about the evolutionary stuff - we are NOT living in caves as hunter-gatherers, or in a basic subsistence agrarian society. So the point at which we stop feeding is a balance, surely, between the benefit to our child of breastmilk and the very real demands of modern life on us and our children.

silverfrog - you said what I was thinking.

IMHO this kind of talk actually does a great deal of damage to the whole bf communication and promotion effort.

Surely it's better to be honest about your experiences? Some women might think you're not meant to leak after a few weeks and think they're "weird." By Charlotte saying that she still leaked at 6 months it is surely saying to mums not to worry if they still are aswell - it's not abnormal. Charlotte probably didn't know that after 6 months leaking stops anyway. Also if she was 6 months when she got pregnant i know the milk can taste different and perhaps ruby went off breastfeeding?

lol margoandjerry at 'another body'

I don't think Charlotte Church said anything wrong. She was being honest, and did not say anything derogatory about women who bf for longer the six months (unlike Geri Halliwell's breastfeeding nazi comment that I saw in a magazine a couple of years ago).

Also I think the fact that she stopped bfing at 6 months could in fact make bfing seem more accessible to women, as 6 months to many women seems a realistic goal, iyswim.

"and bfing is not all a bed of roses"

No - and neither is ff.

However the problems associated with ff tend to be all to do with the baby - constipation, taking too much/too little, vomiting, episodes of minor illness and infections in infancy, etc. The thing is that nobody actually thinks of these things as 'ff problems' - they're just standard 'new baby problems'. Unlike breastfeeding problems which are.... breastfeeding problems.

"nope, sorry Sabire. I know it would be nice if my experience was what you think it was but actually it was exactly as I've expressed it..."

But you've just said that your dd was very much into solids and you seem to be linking this with her wanting to stop bf. I questioned in my post whether the timing and of introduction of solids might impact on duration of bf.

Most babies of 7/8/9 months in the UK are on three meals of solids a day, plus drinks in addition to breastmilk, plus are discouraged from night feeds and from small, frequent feeds during the day. Most also have dummies and many are separated from their mums for considerable periods during the week as many women go back to work after six months. I'm convinced that this CAN make a difference to their likelyhood of self weaning from the breast prior to 12 months.

I have to say that in my own experience, the baby who I weaned latest and bf most frequently bf the longest.

Have to say I totally agree with Sabire. We did BLW which meant that ds didn't start properly eating until just past 11 months. He was pretty much exclusively breastfed for 9-10m. I went back to work at 13 months, once he was properly eating solids and drinking other things than milk.

I do think that as a society we need to change our perception of bf-ing and what is normal. And I stand by my statements that what Charlotte Church is quoted in that article as saying is extremely unhelpful. I still hope that she was misquoted (although i guess we'll never know)

She has only bf one child and she is talking about her experiences. Why should people have to be so politically correct all the time. The fact that she did bf for 6 months will have encouraged some young women to do the same.

My friend bf both her two dd's until they were almost 2 years old but she literally did cartwheels in the street when she decided to stop bfing her youngest and we went on a girls night out as she wanted to celebrate "getting her body back" (her words)there is nothing wrong about being pleased or relieved that you are no longer bfing surely it is better to talk about the negatives as well as the positives otherwise we all end with a rose tinted view of bfing and think that we are the only one experiencing problems which means that you are more likely to give up when you encounter issues.

What the hell has political correctness got to do with it?

Umm, I totally identify with CC's comments.
I breastfed both of mine for 6mths and was relieved when I stopped.
I didn't lose any weight when breastfeeding and my already sizeable chest was enormous. I felt like a whale and very cumbersome tbh.
I totally applaud anybody who BF's for longer than 6mths, but for me, getting to that stage was a relief as BF had felt like a chore for the last 2 months.

"and the very real demands of modern life on us and our children"

Other than work, what would you say it about the modern woman's life that makes continued breastfeeding so difficult for her - other than her own and other people's attitudes and beliefs about breastfeeding?

we did BLW too... and for dd2 it meant that she ate what food she wanted, when she wanted, which was around, ooh, 6 months and a day or so...

I restricted drinks for her 9other than bf, which she had on demand) but she had other ideas and would regularly swipe herr sisters drinks in prefrence to bf

I do agree that a lot of attitudes need changing wrt bf in this country, but I don't think that dismissing several people's expereiences of bf with remarks such as

"It was more likely to be nursing strike - v common at that age IME. Did you ever get any proper support with it?"

"Most infants - given the chance - will start nursing again once the mature milk comes in (assuming they haven't lost their ability to nurse)"

"I know many people feel their babies self weaned - like thesuburbandryad, I wonder in how many instances this self weaning is actually a nursing strike (a term most mothers have never heard) which is met with a sigh of relief by a mum who actually would quite like to move on from bf and is welcoming of what seems like a natural chance to stop"

is helpful at all. It does rather read as "of course, if you did it all exactly as we have done, your children would still be bf at 12 months/18 months/whatever.

Please do just take on board, that I too bf on demand, did not refuse night feeds, BLW (which of course, puts the baby in control of what and when they want) and did not go back to work, and yet dd2 still practically self weaned at 10 months, and it took a lot of hard work over several months to keep her going with one feed a day.

"I wonder in how many instances this self weaning is actually a nursing strike"

Except I was questioning, not making any emphatic judgements about why your baby self weaned. And I stand by my belief that the common feeding practices in the UK probably impact on long term breastfeeding rates in a general sense. It's common sense that they do.

I was just pointing out, sabire, that by repeatedly saying things like that (and yes, I know you were not directly commenting on my baby), quite often in what seemed to be a response to someone giving their experience of a baby self weaning, then you appear to be saying that we were, in fact, wrong.

I stand by my comments earlier that to keep on talking about nursing strikes, and for TSD to say that Charlotte Church saying that she was leaking at 6 months was incorrect, is, quite simply patronising.

and adding in things about weaning practices (I do not disagree with you that early weaning is not good, and can lead to premature ending of bf) again just looks like you are trying to dismiss all our experiences and explain them away, wich is why I added further info about my situation.

Anyway, this all came about because I feel Charlotte was unfairly attacked for tlking about her experience. She has been repeatedly jumped on for saying she wanted to stop at 6 months, instead of it being recognised that she has managed to do something that not a very high percentage of women manage to do - bf to 6 months.

tbh i think that if people take CC that seriously then the message they'll get is 'do it for 6 months' rather than 'don't bother'. and after bfing for 6 mos, most women will know whether they want to keep doing it or not, some will, some won't. fair play imo.

she's only 22, she's a good lass i think. and she's done more for bfing in 6 mos than most other celebs do in a lifetime.

also started weaning at 6 months and not a minute earlier or otherwise would have had the wrath of MN upon me. She was just very, very ready for food (still loves all food - not bothered about drinks of any form inc milk)

I did blw on the whole so I'm still not fitting your bill Sabire.

As for why modern life would make extended bf difficult, "other than work" means I can't tell you the main reason which is that I am at work for 8 hours a day. Oh yes, and, as I've said the fact that, my DD was not interested.

We were ending up with a 1 minute effort at the beginning and end of each day and she was clearly not bothered.

I know you'd like to hear that I am internalising some strong anti-bf culture and I secretly think it's terrible and have negative opinions about it but I'm afraid none of this is true.

I think the whole way we talk about breastfeeding and babies needs changing, tbh. I shall write something epic and life-changing and post it on my blog soon. This article has helped, as has this thread.

Cheers