So today I learned that gorillas nurse their young until they are 3 or 4....

[georgimama]

That's it really. Was at Bristol Zoo and the lovely keeper gave a talk about all their gorillas. They have a 23 month old baby and he is still nursing and apparently will continue to do so until he is about 3 or 4.

I just thought that was lovely. Seriously cute gorilla baby.

[VeniVidiVickiQV]

LOL! Expat, you are being apeist.

[expatinscotland]

I don't know where it originated, edam, but I nourish an irrational hatred of most primates and great apes, although gibbons are sort of okay.

[VeniVidiVickiQV]

you are bonkers lady. but in a lovely way

[expatinscotland]

i feel the same way about clowns.

[Aitch]

rofl, you mentalist, expat.

must be getting near the time for you, little lady...

[expatinscotland]

at least i don't have an irrational fear of
MAGGOTS or LOOFAHS .

[StarfishandCoffee]

I feel the same way about clowns too. Bunch of creepy weirdos. Clown masks had to be hung facing the wall for me to enter my friend's house as a child.

[onwardandupward]

splutter edam that Jane Goodall comment nearly compromised my pelvic floor beyond the ponit of no return.

I met her once. She was very interested in Jane Goodall.

[Rhubarb]

Did I say it was a bad thing? I bf mine. No-one can argue that it is anything but beneficial for both child and mother up to the age of 1 at least, and then less so for the child in terms of health benefits perhaps.

Necessity for mean means doing something not through choice, but because you need to.

I thought that was quite clear. You are taking my argument as anti-breastfeeing.

[Rhubarb]

It is necessary in developing worlds and in the animal kingdom because of nutrition. As I said. Because their lives depend upon it.

The argument was that bf beyond the age of 1 is NOT necessary. It may be beneficial and enjoyable and everything else, but in this country today, it is not necessary. It's not even strictly necessary to bf at all, now that there are other options available.

You misunderstand my use of the word necessary here and the context of the argument.

[InTheDollshouse]

Speaking of Jane Goodall, this article has a mention of some of her observations (it's the last section, copied here).

'When reading a children's book about chimpanzees by Jane Goodall to my then five-year-old daughter, I learned that mother's milk remains a chimp's most important food until about three years of age. The book described Goodall's field observation of a chimpanzee mother named Fifi and her four-year-old daughter Flossi.

"Flossi starts to suckle. She will not be able to do this for many more months. Fifis milk is drying up and she often prevents Flossi from nursing these days. Then Flossi pouts and utters sad crying sounds until Fifi relents and lets her suckle for just a little while. In about a year Fifi will probably have another infant."

Of the hundreds of children's books I have borrowed from the library and read to my daughter, this is the only one that described nursing a four-year-old. As another nursing mother I found myself reassured by both Fifi's and Flossi's behavior. I identified with the mother's ambivalence, at first resistant and irritated at the youngster's demands and yet, in the face of her daughter's grief, relenting and giving in. Perhaps those experts who admonish mothers to be firm and consistent are out of touch with our nature as primates.'

[InTheDollshouse]

Well, it's necessary unless you are willing to accept an elevated risk of a variety of childhood and adult diseases, Rhubarb.

[Rhubarb]

Not past the age of 1. Sure enough, bfing protects you with your mother's immunity, but after about 1 when you are also weaned onto solids, the benefits are lowered. It's still much much better than drinking cow's milk, but the word here is necessary. We bf because we are lucky enough to have that choice. In other parts of the world, they bf because there is no other choice and if you want your child to live beyond the age of 5, it's necessary to protect them from contamination. They wean at a much later date because they simply don't have enough food, so it makes sense to keep them on the breast for longer.

We do not have to breastfeed in this country, but there are benefits if we choose to do so. Same as extended breastfeeding is for us, a choice and not a necessity.

[InTheDollshouse]

Rhubarb, I was responding to your point about breastfeeding not being necessary at all.

[PinkTulips]

i used to have some great links to info about primate feedings habits and gaps between their young but my pc seems to have eaten them...

apparently they exclusively breastfeed for a year or 2 before any solid food is introduced at all and then continue to feed for another few years after that during which time the mother remains infertile so doesn't conceive any more infants.

as an aside, i thin my cat is a lentil weaving extended breastfeeder... she's feeding 13 weeks old kittens and is due to pop out a few more any day now! will be interesting to see if she contines to let the older one nurse when she has the new ones.

[Rhubarb]

But drama, that IS my point. You may be taking the very low risk of them having childhood and adult diseases, but even IF that happens, the health service in this country is top notch and we have vaccines that protect them against most childhood diseases. It's not necessary to practice extended breastfeeding. It's a choice!

[Tangle]

PinkTulips - she'll be doing it to help prevent sibling rivalry, you know . Flippancy aside, I'd be fascinated to hear what happens

[PinkTulips]

lol.... she too much of a pushover, i've never seen her raise a paw to the kittens even when they've been tearing chunks out of her. the most she'll do is move across the room.

it does look quite daft when they feed though, she's tiny and they're big for their age so there's not much differance in size anymore

[InTheDollshouse]

I wasn't talking about long-term breastfeeding Rhubarb, but any breastfeeding, since you seemed to be saying that any duration of breastfeeding is unnecessary. My point is that it depends on what you deem is necessary - if you're happy to accept an increased risk of gastroenteritis, respiratory illnesses, childhood cancers, type I diabetes, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and so on (and the difference in risk isn't really low), then no, it's not necessary to breastfeed. Personally I'd hope to aim slightly higher than "baby didn't die".

[Rhubarb]

My original post was in response to this assumption that because the animal kingdom and some mothers in Ethopia breastfeed their child until the age of 4, we should all do it because obviously they are more in touch with nature than we are.

They are indeed more in touch with nature. But my argument was that they breastfeed out of necessity in order to give their children a better chance of survival. We don't have that necessity.

We can be fairly confident that even if we bottle feed our children and wean at 3 months old, our child will still survive and grow up to be healthy.

My argument isn't about whether it is more beneficial, but whether breastfeeding is vital for that child's survival. In this country it is not.

[welliemum]

Rhubarb, I'm guessing that you haven't been an extended bf-er and that this is why you're so sure and so insistent that it's not "necessary".

If you need to believe that for your own peace of mind, that's fine, but you need to be careful about what you say on a public website because it's not correct to say so categorically that bfing - extended or short-term - is no longer necessary in a developed country.

The truth is that no-one knows for sure, but current research suggest that bfing has profound, probably lifelong effects for some people.

This sort of stuff is upsetting for ff-ers to read and so l'll leave it at that, but there seems to be a strong dose-dependent effect of bf for a lot of risks. In other words, it's not just important whether you bf or not, but also how long you continue. So, how long should that be?

As far as I'm aware, there is no age where you can confidently say that bf stops being useful. But if you had to guess, it's quite likely that the physiological duration of bf - around 3 years for humans by many accounts - reflects the point where for most people the costs of bf (to the mother) would start to outweigh the health advantages (to the baby).

By then, of course, the advantages could be quite small and are probably related to maturing the immune system rather than nutrition - but as we can't for obvious reasons study this in developed countries, I don't think it's something we can make confident pronouncements about, either way.

(I don't have a personal axe to grind about extended bf by the way - mine both self weaned when I was pregnant, at 19 months and 25 months, so clearly I'm not up to gorilla standards here.)

[SharpMolarBear]

"They're vile.

Chimps are even worse. "

expat, you should read what they're saying about you on chimpnet!

[cthea]

Sorry to jump from post 1 to posting myself - but what of it? I saw some primates doing some pretty ... ... can't find the words, stuff, at Newquay Zoo this August. (Male jumping on female, wham, bam, thank you mam, then sniffing it too. My DCs watched it with mirth and STILL want to rbing it up in conversation.)

[SharpMolarBear]

Maybe it was a 2nd date?
You are being very judgemental

[welliemum]

I remember (pre-children) many times PMSL in Bristol Zoo in front of the gorilla enclosure, eavesdropping on the other conversations:

• "Daddy, what is that gorilla doing to that other gorilla?"
• "Em, em.... don't you want to go and see Wendy the Elephant now?"

etc

They had a gorilla breeding programme and someone had obviously explained to the gorillas how Very Important the breeding programme was