Since A is now one, I guess I am now offi­cially an extended, tan­dem nurser! Woohoo! K is two and will be three in Novem­ber and still nurs­ing. I recently had some­one ask me how I decided to nurse him for so long. Really, it wasn’t a one time deci­sion that I made. It was sev­eral smaller deci­sions made along the way. Many peo­ple decide to stop nurs­ing at twelve months and are sur­prised when I tell them I don’t plan to wean A any time soon. Those same peo­ple are gen­er­ally even more sur­prised to find out that not only will I not wean A soon, K is still nurs­ing, too. :

Since I decided to put a link to my web­site in my Face­book page, I thought now is as good a time as any to answer some of those ques­tions. I don’t feel like I need to defend my deci­sion, and I’m not try­ing to tell any­one else what they should do for their fam­ily. I sim­ply like to talk about breast­feed­ing and other par­ent­ing issues. Thus, I have a blog pretty much ded­i­cated to doing just that!

When K was born, I had my share of strug­gles learn­ing to nurse him. He was early. He needed a shield to latch. He didn’t latch for the first sev­eral days of life. He had jaun­dice. He was a sleepy baby. I am sure there are a cou­ple oth­ers I could list, but luck­ily, those first weeks have faded a lit­tle in my mem­ory and now I remem­ber them mostly with rose col­ored glasses. My first goal was to nurse him for 6 weeks. Once I made that goal, my next goal became three months. Once I made that goal, I decided to go big and made my goal twelve months. Well, by the time K was a year old, I was preg­nant with A. I knew that sta­tis­ti­cally most babies will wean dur­ing a mother’s preg­nancy. I also knew that K still depended on nurs­ing for com­fort and nutri­tion through­out the day and some­times through the night, too. I fig­ured that since 70% of babies wean dur­ing a mother’s preg­nancy, he would too, and I would let him decide when that time was instead of decid­ing for him.

Well, as my preg­nancy pro­gressed, K still seemed to need “mommy milk” in a very real way that wasn’t met in any other man­ner. I can’t say that nurs­ing while preg­nant was the eas­i­est thing I have ever done or the most com­fort­able. How­ever, it was some­thing I did for K because he needed, wanted, and liked it

K was 20.5 months old when A was born. At that point, being able to nurse both K and A was a tremen­dous help in the tran­si­tion from one child to two. K was still very young and still needed a lot of mommy time. Because of that, I decided to allow him to con­tinue nurs­ing on demand. I felt as though choos­ing to have A was a deci­sion that Jason and I made. K had no part in that deci­sion, so I didn’t think that hav­ing A should be the rea­son he was no longer able to nurse. At that point, it became my goal to allow K to choose his own date for wean­ing. I reserve the right to change my mind in the case of any unforseen cir­cum­stances, but at this point, I hope to achieve child-led weaning.

Now, I am cur­rently nurs­ing A who is also past twelve months. Because of the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence I have had with nurs­ing K, I hope to also allow A to make the deci­sion of child-led wean­ing for him­self. Also, with A being sen­si­tive to dairy, we won’t be intro­duc­ing cow’s milk or other dairy prod­ucts to him for a while. Con­tin­u­ing to nurse him helps me to ensure that he’s get­ting fats, pro­teins, calo­ries, and other immuno­log­i­cal ben­e­fits dur­ing his toddlerhood.

What I’ve writ­ten are my per­sonal rea­sons for choos­ing extended and tan­dem nurs­ing for my fam­ily. There are also sev­eral resources that encour­age and sup­port extended nurs­ing. If you are inter­ested, here are a few:

Extended Nurs­ing Fact Sheet

Are there health ben­e­fits to nurs­ing past one year of age?

Breast­feed a Tod­dler– Why on Earth?

Breast­feed­ing Beyond a Year

Breast­feed­ing and the Use of Human Milk (AAP)

Pedi­a­tri­cians and par­ents should be aware that exclu­sive breast­feed­ing is suf­fi­cient to sup­port opti­mal growth and devel­op­ment for approx­i­mately the first 6 months of life and pro­vides con­tin­u­ing pro­tec­tion against diar­rhea and res­pi­ra­tory tract infec­tion. Breast­feed­ing should be con­tin­ued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutu­ally desired by mother and child.

The World Health Organization’s infant feed­ing recommendations

As a global pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tion, infants should be exclu­sively breast­fed(1) for the first six months of life to achieve opti­mal growth, devel­op­ment and health(2). There­after, to meet their evolv­ing nutri­tional require­ments, infants should receive nutri­tion­ally ade­quate and safe com­ple­men­tary foods while breast­feed­ing con­tin­ues for up to two years of age or beyond.

Maybe instead of my post being called Word­less Wednes­day, I could call it Wordy Wednes­day.