LOL! Mine, too! I nursed through my whole pregnancy. My VBAC baby was born at 39 weeks, 6 days. I will say that nursing works great to keep the contractions going if they start dying off, though The nurse during my labor actually told me to get to nursing my toddler when my contractions petered off, lol. And it worked nicely.

OK I have to agree with their reaction to that. Same as they prefer to do the NST with medication rather than nipple stimulation. They just cannot get accurate results, and if there were to be a sudden surge in the dose of -tocins you received (eg, kink in the line, poor mixing, sudden let-down reflex), then they may not be able to reverse it in time because they simply dont know what sort of dosage they are reversing.

That said, they probably should have said something about that BEFORE the induction started, including recommending or banning NSI in the “informed patient” process… Thats just sloppy on their part!

Wow Michelle.

I read that and just thought “holy CRAP! How much would she have to eat just to stay upright!”

Congrats! Keep up the good work!

Krista, I just had to comment that this has me rolling on the floor! Thanks

Oh.. and maybe that ob can explain to me why the pregnancy I nursed through was LONGER than my first pregnancy, which I obviously did not nurse through? Hmmm… First baby, labor began at 38w4d!!

Goodness, if Nipple stimulation or sex (I was told once that my husband should avoid sending me to orgasm for the same reason…) lead to early labour, I would never have stayed pregnant! Thats just insane!

My milk supply did go down to about nothing during the second trimester, and I think I was nearly dry in the third, but two days after th e birth, my milk came back in with a “BOOM!” you could hear four miles away, and my toddler was the happiest child on earth. He seriously looked up, said, “Good milk again!” (because it was back) and then tucked in to nurse for thirty minutes straight.

I did lose most of my milk during the second trimester, but I got colostrum during the third. Everyone’s different!

My milk dried up around 17 weeks, but she kept nursing anyway. My colostrum came in at 21 weeks. My daughter was 2.

I’m sorry you feel that way. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but the average age for stopping breastfeeding is over 2; the World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding for a *minimum* of 2 years. There are also more antibodies in the milk after 1 year than before, and the child definitely still gets benefits from it after 6 months.

Really? Because 15 ounces of breast milk a day during the second year provides
* 29% of energy requirements
* 43% of protein requirements
* 36% of calcium requirements
* 75% of vitamin A requirements
* 76% of folate requirements
* 94% of vitamin B12 requirements
* 60% of vitamin C requirements

Nursing toddlers are also less prone to illness (Gulick,1986) while being more socially well adjusted (Ferguson, 1987). Furthermore, Katherine Dettwyler showed that the physiological age for weaning is actually somewhere between 2 and 7, as that is when baby teeth (aka milk teeth) come in and are lost.

Anonymous, you may feel that it is disgusting and that is your opinion. But please, back up your opinions with facts instead of conjecture.

My child had a severe milk allergy, and could not “transition to cow’s milk” as so many experts command parents to do. The continued benefits of nursing to children, well beyond 6 months, have already been pointed out.

Why cut out such a significant source of nutrition, just when a child enters a stage notorious for being “picky” about food? Yes, maybe the healthy breakfast I prepared ended up in his hair, maybe that well-balanced lunch ended up on the floor, but as long as he still had some breastmilk, he was getting nutrients and essential substances to help his digestion mature.

“If a child is old enough to pull your shirt up in public, its time to stop.”
No, I must respectfully disagree. If the child is old enough to tug on your shirt, it is time to teach boundaries, waiting until we get to a safe place/return home, asking politely instead of demanding. It does not mean the mother and child *must* cease their nursing relationship if it is still mutually desired to continue.

And as for the child not wanting to nurse, have you ever tried to *make* a child nurse who was done? It is not possible. Once the child is no longer interested, the mom couldn’t force the breastfeeding relationship to continue, even if she wanted to, and most moms of nursing toddlers are happy to see their child has developed to the point where he/she is ready to stop nursing. Just because one person chooses to stop nursing at a certain point doesn’t mean that choice is the only right one for every family, everywhere.

Finally, your use of the word “gross” to describe the breastfeeding relationship leads me to suspect you are a troll, and do not actually have any firsthand experience with breastfeeding. I simply present my comments for other visitors to this site to think about and hopefully realize there’s nothing “gross” about a human mother feeding her human offspring human milk.

Hmm. Personally, I think bigotry and culturally-induced fixation on a mother’s mammaries as inherent sex toys (to the point of seeing a nursing toddler as committing an obscene act or the mother as committing a form of child sexual abuse) is what’s disgusting.

Especially since in most cultures, if you bother to pick up a few anthropology texts and read (warning, they are usually written at a tenth grade reading level or higher) it becomes obvious that the vast majority of world cultures practice “extended” nursing, as do primates in general. Also that the human brain does most of its development in the years from birth to age three, and funny, most toddlers, if allowed to self wean, tend to stop nursing spontaneously somewhere between age two and a half and four.

So do you think it’s time for me to wean my high school senior? I kind of figured she’d have to wean next year when she went to college anyhow.

(Er, I mean, yes I agree that’s probably a trolling post. How quaint! I hadn’t seen many of those around here for a while.)

Well, it’s certainly wrong if the mother is taking certain psychiatric medications to control severe symptoms of OCD and general anxiety – many meds are perfectly safe to use by nursing mothers, but the major tranquilizers tend to leak into the milk, also tend to reduce milk output. Not ideal unless you want to get your kids high on secondhand medicine.

Some of the antipsychotics on the market (if not all) also pose a definite no-no to nurse-nurse.

Then there’s the issue of personality disorders that can be comorbid with such conditions as anxiety disorders (OCD is an anxiety disorder) and bipolar disorder. There isn’t really any effective treatment for things like borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, etc because not only are these disorders not caused by wonky brain chemistry in the first place, but the patient also does not generally believe s/he has a disorder in the first place, and so resists treatment.

Regarding that link, I don’t think any of us are saying that a child over the age of 1 should be exclusively breastfed. Nor do I know anyone who exclusively breastfed past that age, with the possible exception of a child who had cancer and couldn’t keep anything but breastmilk down during his chemo – but that was a limited time period.

I don’t think it appropriate for a 5-year-old (or 2-year-old) to lift up his mother’s shirt and shout about it in public, or at home. This doesn’t mean breastfeeding can’t continue, just that the mother needs to instruct the child to ask in a better way. My son has asked in public since turning 2, but did so quietly, and most of the time I could explain that he could nurse when we got home.

I wonder what you would say about my AUSTRALIAN Obstetrician encouraging me, a diabetic with a thyroid and heart condition, to breastfeed IF I COULD for as LONG as I could, to protect my daughter from the same illnesses I have. Neither of my conditions is lifestyle related, it is all inherited. The best thing I can do for her is to breastfeed her as long as I can. She will be 2 in the end of October. Considering her paediatrician said to me before she was born that she would need to be on AT LEAST one medication for thyroid trouble before she was one, she is doing pretty well to be on none. Oh yeah. Now that this paed KNOWS she is still breastfed, that is what she attributes it to, and that is what she recommends for ALL the women she comes across with my medical background. Only problem is that this particular mix of conditions is notorious for poor milk supply. Nothing that loads of skin-to-skin time and suckling cant fix.

While I am here,
Thankyou God for my breasts, for the ability to nourish my children, that the milk they made has kept my daughter well.

In Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Suck on that, Troll!

Hmm. Having never seen any of the Shrek movies except for the first one, does Fiona nurse her offspring past the colic age? Oh, wait, they’re not trolls, they’re ogres. Never mind.

But I’m sure baby ogres get plenty of mothers’ milk.

Teeth are definitely not a problem, thankfully. My son got teeth at just over 4 months, and there’s no way I was going to stop breastfeeding at that point. Now that he’s 2.5 he breastfeeds when he wakes up, at nap, and bedtime. I actually do know of a couple of 5-year-olds who still breastfed on occasion, but it wasn’t often, AFAIK, once a day or less. But as has been pointed out earlier, they still benefit from the breastmilk past 1 and 2.

I agree that doctors should expect tandem feeding with at least one of their patients. Thankfully my midwives and Health Visitor are perfectly happy that I tandem-feed.