The Beautiful Letdown

A breastfeeding blog that dabbles in tandem, extended nursing, gentle parenting and much more

Nursing Too Long

December14

Does nurs­ing too long some­times hurt the case for extended breast­feed­ing? That’s some­thing I’ve been think­ing about lately. I will not wean my chil­dren because of what other peo­ple think, and they aren’t ready to wean, so they will nurse on. But… Could I put off a new mom from nurs­ing because I am *still* nurs­ing my 3 year old or because I’m not only nurs­ing a 3 year old, but I’m also nurs­ing a 17 month old, too?

I remem­ber read­ing some­thing like this on another blog quite a while ago. Some­one had sug­gested to another extended nurs­ing mom that maybe it was best not to be too “out there” about nurs­ing her tod­dler. I found the com­ments to be very encour­ag­ing and insightful.

Lately, we’ve had a few friends who have had babies and I’ve also had the chance to visit with some moms who have new babies. Some of them have not men­tioned the fact that my chil­dren nurse, but one of the moms asked me what my hus­band thought of me still nurs­ing K. Hon­estly, I don’t think that Jason thinks much of it one way or another. It just is for us.

I didn’t wake up one morn­ing and think ‘hmmm, I should try nurs­ing a 3 year old.’ I did wake up every day for three years and think that he still needed nurs­ing so I would con­tinue. He didn’t get too old overnight, but he has grown grad­u­ally day by day and week by week. He doesn’t pull on my shirt. He does ask for milk though. I’m sure there are peo­ple who won­der when will I EVER quit nurs­ing, and I can truth­fully say to those peo­ple that I don’t know how old K or A will be. I do know though, that I will stop nurs­ing when I am sure that it is their choice and because they no longer need or want milk from mommy.

posted under Weaning
7 Comments to

“Nursing Too Long”

  1. On December 15th, 2008 at 7:48 am Susan Says:

    I agree. I’m sure a lot of peo­ple delib­er­ately stop breast­feed­ing their child just because it is not cul­tur­aly accept­able. To me it seems much eas­ier to carry on until the child chooses to stop rather than go through the trauma of stop­ping them before they’re done. I can’t say that the con­cept of extended nursng put me off at all — in the early days when it was hard I just aimed for four months in my head and by the time I got to four months I felt tlike I could carry on indefinitely.

  2. On December 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm Shannon Says:

    I don’t (and didn’t) find extended nurs­ing off putting at all. I found it very encour­ag­ing, espe­cially while I was going through what I did with Aaron, to know that it CAN be done and that prob­lems with nurs­ing CAN be over­come and it gave me hope that some­day we would fig­ure it all out and have a good nurs­ing rela­tion­ship. It was nice to know that some moms kept going even though it wasn’t always easy.

  3. On December 15th, 2008 at 2:01 pm Carrie Says:

    I totally agree with your com­ment that “I didn’t wake up one morn­ing and think ‘hmmm, I should try nurs­ing a 3 year old.” LOL! I remem­ber see­ing women nurse their tod­dlers and think­ing it was weird, but then when you become a mom one day just turns into the next.

  4. On December 19th, 2008 at 1:13 am Rachel Says:

    I encour­age women to shoot for a year as a good goal. That’s what I did with my first and ended up wean­ing around 2ish. If peo­ple give the “when they’re old enough to ask for it, they’re too old” clique, I tell peo­ple that accord­ing to anthro­pol­ogy stud­ies, most mam­mals wean when their back molars come in–which is 5 years old in humans. Don’t quote me–research for yourself.

    Makes a tod­dler nurs­ing not seem so odd.

  5. On December 21st, 2008 at 6:50 am Heather @ Not a DIY LIfe Says:

    I know that nurs­ing my 19 month old weirds peo­ple out, espe­cially my sis­ter who is expect­ing her first child in May. I know she plans to nurse, but “not for 2 years like Heather.” What I haven’t told my fam­ily is that I plan to prac­tice child-led wean­ing and let Lady­bug be done when she’s done, not the other way around. I enjoy nurs­ing so much, I know that I’ll be sad when she’s done.

    But I try to encour­age moms, espe­cially new moms, to make a breast­feed­ing goal and stick to it. They might find that it’s going so well and they enjoy it so much that they’ll extend that goal. that’s what i did. My goal was 12 months. But why stop just because we turn a page on the calendar?

  6. On January 3rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm Lam Says:

    I nursed my older son until he was almost 2 and con­tinue to nurse my 19 m/o with no wean­ing plan in sight. While I’m no lac­tivist, I do nurse quite openly. This brazen pub­lic habit of mine has never been met with a sin­gle side­ways glance nor snide com­ment even though I’m in a fairly con­ser­v­a­tive area were extended nurs­ing is rare and pub­lic extended nurs­ing is rarer yet. I’ve often sus­pected it’s because I’m Asian and they see me as hav­ing gone “native” or something…that per­haps a com­ment on my nurs­ing would be con­strued as a racially charged judg­ment defy­ing the rules of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. I find that rather comical!

  7. On January 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm Carllie Says:

    I am still nurs­ing my son who turned 2 in August. I have tried to tell him that the milk is all gone and to quit but I even­tu­ally give in and let him nurse. I dont think it is a bad thing to nurse a tod­dler, but I know that other peo­ple view it as weird. I see noth­ing wrong with it. There is such a strong bond between me and my baby and I was his food for so long, it was all he ever knew. I think he will quit when he is ready to.

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