Extended breastfeeding - milk is drying up but I'm not ready

[iaMHannah91]

Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone responds and can give me some advice on what I can do, or even just on managing my feelings.

My LO is 21 months and I am so conflicted about stopping nursing. Some days, usually when he bites! But in general, I am just not ready. However, I have a very low milk supply and my LO is pretty much just nursing for comfort now. The biting usually comes from frustration when there is no milk.

To help me come to terms with this stage of our journey, I bought a Milkies DIY kit, so I can make a breastmilk necklace. However, I was finding it really hard to get any milk out, because my LO drinks whatever there is. I resorted to hand expressing a few drops a day, until I reached the required 4 ml.

I thought that I had come to terms with coming to the end of the nursing journey, but something happened today that made me realise just how not ready I am.

We have been staying with my parents for a few days and I took my pot of milk with me, so I could keep up the hard work. However just before setting off today, I found that my dad had rinsed it out. When I asked him, he said it was empty. I assured him it wasn't and he just laughed and asked if I was planning to scrape the milk off the side.

I burst in tears. Like full on sobbing. And I just can't stop.

So, narcissistic father aside, this told me two things:

1. I am really not ready to stop
2. The PND has not just gone away

I really don't know what to do with myself and I'm just looking for help and don't know where to turn.

I think if you are going to quote data on primates breastfeeding you must also mention that primates do NOT have long periods of complementary feeding - where offspring receives most of calories from solid food and gets only a small part of their caloric intake from breast milk. Human infants would not survive and/or thrive for 3-5 years being exclusively breasted.
You also must mention that no scientific studies demonstrate quantifiable benefits of breastfeeding past 12mo, or after balanced solid food diet has been established.

People can of course do what they prefer. But I think women spend extraordinary amount of time focusing on and stressing about this. If extended breastfeeding works well - great. But it or doesn’t - maybe its time to move on.

OP mentions an untreated depression. It is a far more important issue that will have a profound impact on her child, if she does not get help.
Maybe because most of the people commenting on here have small children and don’t quite realise it. And this is why OP gets advice on increasing her milk supply rather than attending to her MH.

But please read about the rates of anxiety, depression and other MH issues in adolescents. It’s scary and only getting worse. Maternal depression is one of the factors in that.

This can be a typical behaviour at around this age as the milk is changing and he is communicating his needs to your body. As he's now eating food, he might be relying on you more for hydration than nutrition and the first milk he gets is more watery, hence the switching between boobs, finding that he is still getting "fattier" milk, and getting frustrated. Your breasts are never "empty", as such, it's more like a river than a lake. Sometimes, it might be flowing very quickly and at other times it's more of a trickle, but there is always milk.

It definitely can be harder to express at this stage. Have you tried watching videos of your LO? That also triggered a let-down for me. I got a ring from Cumbria life casting, they don't need a lot of milk and they did a brilliant job.

It’s really refreshing to see so many replies on this thread that appreciate the benefits of extended breastfeeding.

OP, sorry this is a tricky time for you. It’s very likely you still have some milk even if you can’t express much. The quantity will go down but the health and nutritional benefits will still be working their magic. You’ve done incredibly well to get this far. I’m still nursing my toddler, and am pregnant, so that has brought lots of conflicted feelings. Doubt about how much she’s getting, feeling so sore from the hormonal changes, still aiming to reach two years, and more.

Breastfeeding is our special time, but I can see other things can replace it further down the line. I don’t know about your little boy but my daughter won’t really just cuddle up with me, she wants to nurse at the same time. But she will happily cuddle with others, so I’m looking forward to that when we no longer nurse. I’m sure we’ll come to find new and equally rewarding ways to connect and calm our DC once BF’ing stops.

I "must" do nothing. You incorrectly stated that other mammals do not breastfeed for long periods of time and past infancy. This is incorrect. Our closest relatives do breastfeed for much longer than we do, despite shorter lifespans. If you wish to read the research, Katherine Dettwyler is a good starting point on the duration of human feeding in history across the world. There is limited data on the benefits of long term breastfeeding, but we do know that longer duration is associated with lower risks of breast cancer for the mother, for a start. We also know that breastmilk contains antibodies and a child's immune system is not fully developed until aged 6. Anyone with a child who has just started school or nursery is glad of any extra immunity they can get.

After 6 months, babies need iron in addition to the nutrition from breastfeeding and for social and cultural reasons, we rely on our 3+ year olds eating a variety of food. In reality, the majority of a child's nutritional needs can be met via breastfeeding, but there are benefits to eating solids too.

Abruptly stopping breastfeeding can worsen or even cause PND due to sudden hormonal changes. It can also be very comforting and bonding to both mother and child, and releases oxytocin and endorphins, so stopping breastfeeding when you are not ready to do so is a harmful suggestion to a mother who is seeking breastfeeding support.

It wasn't me who mentioned mammals before - but the poster was correct -

‘There is no benefit to breastfeed much past the time kids start on solid food. It's not something we see in nature with any mammals’

NO other mammals combine extended periods of combination of breastfeeding and solid food. Primates, our closest relatives - exclusively breastfeed - for longer than humans. And if you read studies on thar - their milk has different composition, and their food sources are often limited. And, crucially -
once their babies start eating solids - bf stops.

And, even you admit that there is limited data on benefits of extended breastfeeding. So - at 21 months OP has given her child all the benefits of bf she could….

But - people on here sound like bf the only thing that matters in motherhood.

They’d rather OP stayed depressed - but continued doing something that is keeping her that way,

Ime people get very upset about extended bf and spend a lot of time trying to convince you to stop.
Anyway I fed my first until 3 and my second until 4. Second was quite able to hold a conversation from 2.5 and frequently used to tell me the milk had run out and needed to swap sides and then was cross when the milk had all gone. But the supply remained roughly the same for over a year. Toddler and slightly older are very efficient at getting milk and emptying the supply quickly. This was only too apparent when I had weaned my eldest weeks before my second was born, and my second was hopeless at bf at the beginning and fed for hours hardly denting the supply

Oh love, you've done brilliantly!
Please don't underestimate how harsh the hormonal crash can be when milk production stops, it can last a couple of months too.
You will both adjust.
Don't automatically head for antidepressants, make sure your doctor rules out any thyroid/ amemia/vitamin deficiencies first.
How old are you? If you are still feeling flat and sad consider whether peri menopause is raising it's head, I went from breastfeeding my second to hrt within months. (And you can actually be in hrt while feeding).

@MMmomDD she isn't causing her own depression by BF though? Can you just let her be sad about stopping without projecting so much? You're conflating her depression and her feelings about breastfeeding in quite an unhelpful way. She doesn't at all seem to me to be "reducing motherhood to bf" or wanting to keep her boy a baby. BF is not just for babies.

@Sashya but her boy doesn't want to stop yet and neither does she? Honestly you come across as just not liking extended BF. People seem to be applying the BF haze of a newborn with everyone pressuring you to BF to a mother of a nearly two-year-old. It's a different set of emotions. A bit weird to just conclude "it's not working."

Leaving aside other mammals, 21 months is young for weaning spontaneously in humans.

OP my older son stopped around three and a half but I think by the time he did the milk had been gone for quite a while and I just hadn't realised 😂 I have never been able to express.There's nothing wrong with suckling for comfort at 21 months if you can make it work for you. He might be getting more than you think.

The swapping boobs thing - mine have always done this, they get impatient and also like to mess about more as they nurse as they grow older.

DS2 currently 23 months. I don't really "feed" as such any more. Feed to sleep at night and he'll pop on and off now and then during the day if he wants comfort. I can see he's still getting some milk but I wouldn't expect a "feed" to last very long at this age at all, so I wouldn't see that as a sign the milk is going.

I'm sorry about your dad saying that, ugh.

But - people on here sound like bf the only thing that matters in motherhood.

They’d rather OP stayed depressed - but continued doing something that is keeping her that way,

@MMmomDD and honestly, as someone who has suffered with post-natal and other mental health problems, and someone who has done extended bf, I find you pitting them against each other in this way quite weird. You can BF past one and still care about your own and other people's mental health. OP may have PPD but her breastfeeding is not pathological and has not caused her mental illness. Worries and emotions about something can be a symptom not a cause. Or sometimes just a natural emotion on the part of someone who is also suffering from depression. I didn't "reduce" my mothering to breastfeeding but it is part of my mothering. it didn't cause my depression.

All the mammals I mentioned start eating solid food at a few months to a year old and continue to BF alongside solids for several years. I don't know where you get your info from, but it's wrong.

OF COURSE milk of other primates has a different composition, the milk of every species is different because they are different species. What a bizarre argument. That's why we can't feed out babies cow or goat milk in place of human milk and have them grow up healthy!

Your arrogance in thinking your strange and ill-informed opinions are superior to the NHS and the WHO is quite astounding.

Telling OP to just give up BFing is not helpful or supportive.

OP mentioned her PND (or a more general depression) herself. She also mentioned trying to get help with it.

Clearly her BF has not caused it. But at this point, it is adding to it. Telling her to pay more attention to her MH does not constitute some sort of denial of benefits of bf. But it is also possible to mention that she may not need to be so hyper focused on bf at this time, and needs to re-focus on other aspects of motherhood.
Equally - even if she fixes BF for a bit now - she'll be in the same exact place ~6+mo when it comes to its natural conclusion - and none of the BF-advisors on here have suggested anything that would be helpful for her to deal with the underlying issues OP mentioned...

Back to Primates.... They do NOT continue to bf next alongside solid foods. It's just a fact. It does not mean that people can't or shouldn't. But facts are facts.

...Humans also have shorter periods of lactation and shorter interbirth intervals than other apes [27]. This may have been facilitated by the development of a complementary feeding period, during which the offspring simultaneously receives nutrition from milk and from other foods provided by the mother. This complementary feeding period is not observed in most other primates [28, 29], although in callitrichid primates (marmosets and tamarins), who also have relatively short periods of lactation.... However, such a strategy is also predicted to be flexible, since providing non-breastmilk foods early during development would only be advantageous under conditions that allowed the weaned infant to survive and thrive...

Source: ‘Optimising’ breastfeeding: what can we learn from evolutionary, comparative and anthropological aspects of lactation? - PMC

And if you google any number of scientific literature on the subject, this is not hard to confirm.

It's very easy to Google "When do orangutans/chimpanzees/gorillas begin to eat solid foods?" and "When do orangutans/chimpanzees/gorillas stop breastfeeding?" and see clearly that you are wrong. You also might wish to take a trip to your nearest zoo where you will see young primates eating solid food and breastfeeding, if you care to watch them for long enough.

There's a link here which states it in simple terms for orangutans, you can find the rest yourself. https://seaworld.org/animals/all-about/orangutan/care-of-young/

If you can provide any evidence that it's breastfeeding, rather than difficulties with breastfeeding and insufficient support, causing OP's MH problems, I'm all ears. Right now, I can see a mother reaching out for support and people like you criticising and invalidating her decisions at every turn. Maybe that's contributing more to the depression.

I'm very confused by posters such as @Sashya suggesting that ofher mammals don't combine solids with nursing. Plenty do. Take horses for example, in the wild they'll start eating grass around a week old, they're grazing in earnest by two months but they'll typically nurse for at least 9 months. Domesticated animals don't tend to do it so much as humans intervene, but in nature they do.

I know, I don't know who wrote that paper she linked to but they've clearly never spent more than a few minutes observing "most other primates."

OP came on here asking for support as she is wrapping up b-feeding. And mentioned she is still depressed - as her PND seems to have been ignored.

Instead of helping her to deal with a natural progression of things most people on here seem to believe that all her problems will be solved if she simply continue breastfeeding for as long as possible.

I get it - it's like a religious belief - not based on facts, all feelings - but sure, everyone to their own.

I do hope OP deals with her depression somehow - either by getting her breastmilk back up, OR by talking to a professional. Eventually - she will need to let go of babyhood and learn to connect to her child in a different way. It happens to all - and it is natural ...

I also just want to send you a big hug OP. It's a shame this thread seems to have gotten derailed into a discussion of whether you should even be breastfeeding instead of supporting you. I think you've done an amazing job to breastfeed at all - and stopping, especially if it's not happening how you'd hoped, can be really hard emotionally. It sounds like you're trying to get help with your PND and I wish you all the best with that; the emotional impact of potentially stopping breastfeeding must be amplified even more if you're struggling with PND. I wonder if it's worth a trip back to your GP, maybe to see a different doctor?

With the feeding, as others have said, if you want to keep going there will likely be things you can do to boost supply. The National Breastfeeding Helpline are supposed to be amazing or if you can afford it perhaps a consultation with a lactation consultant might help? One practical thing that might help if you want to collect some milk for a piece of jewellery could be to try a manual pump. I have never been able to hand express but have a cheap manual pump from Boots - I think it was £9.99 - and on the occasions I've needed to collect milk it's worked brilliantly.

I am also about to stop feeding, not through choice but for a medical reason, and my 2.5yo is going to find it hard. I have mixed feelings - on the one hand he mostly feeds during the night now and I'm very ready to not be waking for multiple feeds, but I know I'll miss it and just the thought of stopping makes me feel teary. And of course when he falls over/hurts himself it's the quickest and best way to calm him so it's such a great tool to have. So I understand how emotional and difficult it can be. Please reach out to the breastfeeding helpline or an IBCLC for some support if you can, I think it will make a big difference. There is also an account on Instagram run by Emma Pickett which has lots of good info (her podcast Makes Milk is also excellent). I hope you manage to find a way to make this stage of breastfeeding work for you (whether you continue or decide to stop) and that you get the help you need with your PND soon.