Ask the woman who nursed a 4 year old

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Here, **lobstermobster **asked me to give some more details about my sustained breastfeeding experience. I’m happy to oblige!

First, to give the uninitiated some common ground, let me tell you what my first exposure to breastfeeding was. When I was about 10, we moved to a new neighborhood, and our neighbor was still breastfeeding her youngest child. I forget the exact chronology, but at some point she was still nursing him when he was about three or four, and let me tell you, our household thought she was a FREAK! Of course, I pretty much got my ideas and values from my parents, and my mother was very clear that in her opinion the woman was forcing this on the kid to “keep him a baby,” and that it was weird and socially unacceptable.

So, no, I was not raised in a hippy commune with people breastfeeding preschoolers as the norm. I was very much in line with our general cultural attitudes.

When we decided to have a baby, I did tons of research, because I am a control [del]freak[/del] enthusiast. This led to my choosing an unmedicated birth, and of course I learned that breast milk is the biological norm, and using artificial baby milk introduces appreciable risks for mother and baby. At first I figured, “Of course I’ll breastfeed, but only until the kid starts getting teeth!” You can imagine my motivation on that idea, I’m sure. Then I learned how early they start getting teeth, and how formula is still inferior for their needs at that point.

So, I had the baby, one day before I was scheduled to attend a class on breastfeeding. My baby wouldn’t latch properly, so I developed sore nipples, then bleeding nipples and horrible pain, followed by thrush. I became a research machine, finally discovering the multiple issues that were causing the problems, and around four months things started working smoothly.

I finally enjoyed nursing my baby, and I do think some of my motivation for sustained breastfeeding was a “you’ll pry it from my cold dead hand” attitude after going through so much to succeed. But I also learned that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends nursing for at least a year, and as long thereafter as both parties desire, and WHO recommends at least two years. Anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler studied traditional societies as well as comparing markers of maturity between humans and other mammals, and looking at the animals’ time of weaning. She found the natural time of weaning to be from 3-7 years.

More recently, I learned that mother’s milk has great benefits for the child for as long as they nurse - extra nutrition, immunity, and laxative effects, to name a few. And that the longer one nurses, the lower one’s risk of breast cancer AND the lower the risk of breast cancer in the female child, regardless of whether she nurses her babies.

But mostly, the reason I just kept going was that my daughter wanted to nurse, it helped me comfort and calm her, and it had no downside. My mother often showed discomfort and asked why I was still nursing, and I quite honestly asked her to share any rational reasons why I should stop (i.e., not “it’s weird” or “it makes me feel uncomfortable”). She never had any, and I’ve never heard any from any other person. Contrary to my mother’s beliefs about our old neighbor, I had no particular desire to push my child to keep nursing. In fact, as she got older, I deferred her desire to nurse more and more, if it conflicted with something else I wanted to do. In this way, I was guiding her through a slow weaning, without precipitously withholding a beloved activity. When I got pregnant, my nipples started to hurt during nursing, and I more actively discouraged it, until she wasn’t nursing at all anymore. She now shows no desire to nurse, though she still likes to rest her head on my breast when she’s tired or upset.

Now I know a lot of people who opine that sustained nursing will make a child immature, clingy, and overly independent, but to my knowledge any research on the subject shows the opposite. And my personal experience is the same. My kid adores school, and is 100% ready to be away from me for seven hours a day when kindergarten starts. She is fierce about being able to do things herself, and a few weeks ago she decided, all on her own, to stop sucking her thumb, and succeeded, cold turkey.

So, that’s the background. I’m glad to answer any questions anyone has - one of my missions is to let people know people like me do exist, and that nursing and sustained nursing are natural and normal.

(Oh, and lobstermobster’s description of the mom with her boob out made me laugh - in all my experience, including attending meetings and conferences dedicated to breastfeeding, where people are very relaxed about these things, I’ve never seen anyone disrobing or walking around with a breast hanging out. It seems like only people who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with nursing ever encounter these exhibitionist mothers.)

2

Oh yes, the dreaded “nursing mom with her boobs hanging out and flapping all around”, encountered commonly on Internet message boards, but so rare as to be considered an endangered species in the real world.

Good on you, is all I have to say.

3

I’ve had the experience of a four-year-old child coming up to his mother to whom I was speaking, climbing onto the bench in front of her, pulling up her shirt, exposing her breast and latching on. On the other hand, I don’t consider this particular woman representative of nursing mothers in general because she was a freakazoid in many other ways.

4

Researching Vitamin D deficiency recently, I came across several cites that linked extended breast-feeding to increased cases of rickets in children. Did you supplement her vitamins?

5

Thanks!

Thanks for not generalizing. In my experience, most mothers are pretty self-conscious about nursing in public, even with tiny babies, and most people nursing older kids hide it from the outside world, have code words for nursing so people won’t know what the child is asking for, and nurse only at home, telling almost no one. Mostly it’s pure social pressure, but it is true that some children have been taken from their mothers by CPS due to sustained nursing. So I’d say the blase breast bearer, especially with an older child, is in the extreme superminority.

Also, most people go with the philosophy that “discipline begins at the breast.” Mothers teach babies that biting, twiddling, and later grabbing the breast or pulling on the shirt without asking politely to nurse are not acceptable behaviors.

6

I’m not trying to be snarky, but after 4 years, didn’t you want your boobs back? Other nursing mothers, who stopped after a year/18 months, have told me that they wanted to feel like their body belonged to them again. Didn’t you ever want to say, “Back off, kid, these are mine!”?

7

I wasn’t aware that a woman could keep producing milk that long…how does that work?

8

A woman will keep producing milk as long as there is frequent and regular nipple stimulation triggering the release of prolactin, a hormone which in turn triggers the production of milk. There are accounts of wet nurses who lactated for decades.

The way it works is that the first few minutes of nursing an infant empty the breast, and then, if they’re still hungry, they keep nursing at the empty breast for a minute or two. This empty breast nipple stimulation triggers the hormonal signal for “make more milk!”. If the baby consistently nurses to empty and a bit beyond, in 3 or 4 days, the body will compensate by making more milk. If, on the other hand, the baby stops nursing while the breast still has milk in it, it signals the body to not make milk so quickly, so that resources are not wasted and so that the protein/fat/water ratio stays appropriate for the baby’s age and development.

My guess, at the end of nursing, is that there was only a small bit of milk actually being consumed and that most of her nutrition, including Vitamin D, came from food. Gradual weaning means that less and less milk is made, but even a small amount of nursing, if done regularly, will keep the milk production happening.

9

I have never heard of *extended *breastfeeding being associated with rickets - I’d imagine most older children would be drinking either cow or soy milk fortified with vitamin D. Rickets in younger babies is being seen more often, probably because more black women are nursing, and more people of all races are using sunblock almost all the time.

Anyway, we did not have any problems, probably because we are (very!) white and I didn’t put sunblock on her on a daily basis. I did try to get her to take vitamins, more because she is a really picky eater than anything else, but she hates all kinds. So I satisfy myself by offering a variety of foods and making sure she eats fortified cereals and milk.

burundi, no offense taken - you have raised a good point. And I fully recognize needing some bodily privacy as a valid factor for moms to consider in when they want to wean. Nursing an older child shares many elements that a physical relationship between adults has: both people have to consent, you need to be polite about asking for what you want, and just being “not in the mood” is a valid response.

For the most part, I didn’t feel that intense pressure to have my body back, but I also did reclaim my bodily privacy gradually. Sometimes she wanted to nurse, but I just didn’t feel like it and would offer to cuddle her or fetch her blankie, say. I also didn’t nurse her overnight starting quite early, and we haven’t ever shared a bed, so I think I got a break that way.

bubble pop electric, milk is produced when it is demanded (i.e., when the nipples are stimulated/sucked). Also, you can nurse through pregnancy and nurse two kids at once, so some women may lactate for years and years. Even women who have weaned and want their milk to dry up sometimes have supply long after they expect it - sensitive women may get enough stimulation from occasionally checking to see if they are making milk to keep making milk! Also, even adoptive mothers who haven’t been pregnant can induce lactation (though often they still need to supplement).

10

Does the milk keep being produced as long as nursing is going on?

I nursed my daughter for 15 months. When we stopped there was no pain of stopping so I’m not sure there was any milk anyway. It seemed to be just a comfort thing at that point, and I needed her to fall asleep without being attached to me.

For me nursing was so much easier than making sure there were clean bottles, buying formula, mixing it, warming it, etc. But I was a stay-at-home mom so I did not have to pump milk at work or anything like that.

11

Thanks, ignorance fought.

Really, women who haven’t been pregnant? Do they take hormones or something?

12

Aside from the milk thing, you can tell if you’re hormonally lactating by the lack of pain when the child suckles. The nipples while under the influence of lactating hormones are stretchier and less ouchy. The child will pull the things a good 5 inches into his or her mouth, and then gnaw on them. Try that with non-functioning nipples, and it hurts, a lot!

(I know this because after I had so much trouble nursing, a really close friend of mine, insistent that I must have been doing something wrong, handed me her infant and wanted to see if I knew what a good latch was. I did, and he did, but wowza did that hurt like hell! Even worse than the first mislatch of a newborn. My no-longer-lactating breasts just weren’t in the right state for it.)

bubble pop electric, some non-biological mothers have produced milk, usually after a process of hormonal manipulation to mimic pregnancy, but sometimes just through nipple stimulation. Adoptive mothers, or women who have babies with other women and both want to nurse, are the target audience here. There’s even one well researched report of a *man *(I think in Sri Lanka?) who lactated enough to support his daughter after his wife’s death. But that’s pretty darn rare!

13

Pretty much, yes. It can be confusing because at first your breasts can get really full and you feel like you’re bursting with milk, and then later that goes away. It’s actually due to a different hormonal system taking over the process once nursing is established. Then add in the fact that an older child nurses less and less, so as **WhyNot **said, the breasts are “told” to make less milk, and it can seem like the breasts are empty. But there’s still milk, and if needed your body can ramp up production again.

bubble pop electric, here’s my understanding, (without going and looking up references). A non-bio mom who wants to nurse will use donated milk or formula in a supplemental nursing system - basically a bag of milk slung high on the chest, with two thin tubes coming down from it and being placed on either side of one nipple. The baby sucks at the nipple, getting nutrition from the SNS while stimulating the mother’s body to lactate. Most women who do this do not ever make enough milk to sustain the baby without supplementation, but many can contribute some of their own milk to their babies, and get the other benefits of nursing. And yes, I remember the tale of the man who nursed his daughter after her mother died! It’s amazing what the human body can do sometimes.

14

Good for you!!!

I nursed Dweezil until he was 2 years 4 months. I was pregnant at the time with Moon Unit and things were getting uncomfy, plus I think the milk was pretty much gone, so the last few weeks were a comfort thing for him only. He lost interest at that point. I didn’t nurse him in public at that point mainly because he was always too interested in other things.

Nursed Moon Unit until she was 13 months old, after a rocky first month (consulting 3 lactation consultants in person, and what finally worked was something I’d seen on the internet!). I’d have gladly gone longer with her but she went on a nursing strike and wouldn’t go near the boob at that point.

When Dweezil was about 14 months old, he had a stomach bug that, for 48 hours, meant he couldn’t keep anything down except breastmilk. Everything else was returned with interest (bleah) shortly after consumption, even water. I was really, really glad we had the backup feeding mechanism! It was pretty weird seeing breastmilk-poop diapers in a kid that old though!

15

Question–what is the point of continuing to do it at this point if most nutrition is coming from outisde sources?

16

I don’t know if my wife knows this or not. I will have to let her know.

My wife has been nursing for the last 22 months now. I don’t think she has any plans to stop, but she’s 14 weeks pregnate and says her nipples are hurting and she thinks she might be losing her milk supply. The little one still loves to nurse and it doesn’t bother me at all. Though she doesn’t nurse in public very often any more.

17

I would have liked to have nursed my kids longer, but for some reason my milk lost its “strength” and I had to supplement. Ivyboy lost a pound when he was four months old and Ivygirl stopped gaining weight when she was four months old.

With Ivyboy, I was told by the pediatrician to start him on cereal and bring him back in five days, and if he hadn’t gained five ounces in five days he was going to hospitilize him. Well, Ivyboy gained eleven ounces in five days and now he’s taller than everyone else in the family.

With Ivygirl, I had this feeder thing that hung around my neck filled with formula, with two tiny tubes that I put in her mouth while she was latched on to my nipple. That way, she got both formula and breast milk.

I do remember one day, Ivylad and I went to Disney MGM for the day while his MIL watched Ivyboy. When we got back from the park, my breasts were swollen and rock hard, they were so full of milk. I had to nurse, just to relieve the pressure. My MIL was a bit miffed, I think, since she’d just fed him, but I wasn’t doing it for him, I was doing it for me.

18

Imagine having a magic wand that would almost instantly calm and quiet a distraught, injured, or otherwise screaming child, as well as helping an overtired child to wind down to sleep. It also continues to provide immunity factors, and as Mama Zappa notes, it’s the ideal medicine and food for kids who have the pukes. Plus, many women find that nursing is the only time a busy toddler or preschooler will slow down and relax, and get some needed cuddle time.

Edward The Head, congratulations on all counts! I have heard that every older child who nurses through a pregnancy learns to count to 20, as moms use that to limit the time of each session due to soreness. It is also normal for moms to have an extreme “GET OFF ME!” impulse when an older child nurses during pregnancy. And supply also dips, but will come back. I recommend the book “Adventures in Tandem Nursing” for more info on nursing during pregnancy and nursing two.

I thought it was funny, according to my daughter, one side started tasting funny before the other when I was in early pregnancy. She declared that when the baby was born, “the baby can have the yucky side, and I can have this side.”

ivylass, I’m so glad you didn’t fall into the trap of thinking nursing is all or nothing - so many people seem to think you have to choose one way or the other, once and for all. The truth is in some cases, babies do need formula, but that usually doesn’t mean you have to wean from the breast. And I know what you mean about “using” the baby to relieve engorgement! (Pumps or even willing husbands can also be of use here.)

19

My friend, who is not at all a freakazoid, nursed her youngest until he was six. By that point I think it was a comfort/bonding thing, probably around bedtime.

20

Hey, wait a minute, you’re my wife right? She asked for this book so I’m just a bit suspicious. I guess I’ll be at the book store tonight.