Factual benefits to breastfeeding an healthy baby beyond six months old?

Factual Questions
1

The Amerian Assiciation of Pediatrics (AAP) used to recommend that babys should be exclusively breastfed for their first six months of life.
My baby is currently seven months old, and in good health, thank Og. I wanted to start weaning him, when I came upon a new AAP guideline. The new guideline says I should breastfeed at least a full year.

I read the article, but frankly, I don’t see what they base this on. Sure, there is lots of evidence of how beneficial breastfeeding is for very young babies. But I have not seen evidence that these benefits are equally big during the next six months of life. It seems to be a case of: “if breastfeeding the first six months is so good, it surely is good the next six months as well”. But that is hardly scientific. And frankly, for many women sic months of breastfeeding is hard enough. Casually remarking that it should be done longer " or you’ll deprive your baby" is setting an unreachable standard.

So, my factual question: can anyone point me to evidence that breastfeeding in the second six months of life has considerable benefits?

I am not interested in information about the health benefits of breastfeeding in general, only in benefits of nursing beyond six months.

Thank you in advance.

2

The AAP guidelines you linked appear to be roughly the same as the WHO’s, though I haven’t read either in their entirety. Both guidelines suggest that weaning should begin around 6-8 months. There’s an upper bound on how long you can healthily breastfeed an infant exclusively. You can only produce so many calories a day, in other words. When they recommend that breastfeeding should continue for 12 months, they don’t mean exclusively - just in a supplemental role.

That is, aim for tapering off to zero at the 12 month mark unless you’re willing to continue longer. The AAP guidelines you linked suggested that there’s probably some benefit to continuing for as long as you’ll put up with it, but as you surmised, the benefits are probably a matter of diminishing returns beyond the 1 year mark.

If you’re looking for factual evidence, I’d start with the bibliography of that AAP document. In particular, footnote 185 to the sentence “Breastfeeding should be continued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutually desired by mother and child.” is probably relevant to your question:

Sugarman M, Kendall-Tackett KA. Weaning ages in a sample of American women who practice extended breastfeeding. Clin Pediatr (Phila). 1995;34 :642 –647

The WHO has some publications and studies on the subject, too:

http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/infantfeeding/en/index.html

About halfway down, there’s a section on breastfeeding. I only glanced at the publications, but they seem to provide their clinical basis for concluding that 6 months was the optimal duration for exclusive breastfeeding. I don’t know how much they get into their opinion of weaning duration, though.

3

Is there any harm from breastfeeding a kid too long? I a man who never had kids so I don’t know, but I keep thinking since breastfeeding is totally natural, I see it as a woman’s personal choice.

But could it do any harm to a kid to keep breastfeeding him? I am referring to physical harm, not psychologically. I mean like hurt his teeth or something. And yes I’m aware the baby’s teeth might hurt the mom :slight_smile:

4

My daughter-in-law, a physician breast-fed her son till he was nearly two. About 9 months, they started him on other foods and by a year and a half, he was down to breast feeding only as a good-night ritual. At around 23 months–we happened to be visiting at the time–he began to refuse it some nights and wanting it others. Eventually, he just stopped. It had long ceased being a significant part of his nutrition, more a bonding ritual, maybe to make up for the fact that she was gone most days.

I think she said that before nine months or so, it was inadvisable to give him cow’s milk and she didn’t want to get involved with formula. After that, it was unimportant from a nutritional point of view.

5

Well, in my daughter’s case, it was beneficial because she wouldn’t eat solids! She refused, absolutely refused solids before she was 13 months old. I offered them to her, various things, three times a day. Nope, not interested. She’d spit it out and just clamp her mouth shut and refuse a second taste. She was on half and half formula and pumped breastmilk, and she was gaining okay, so we didn’t worry too much. (My son didn’t have solids until 1 year on purpose, because of allergy concerns, so I knew a child could survive on a liquid diet that long.) Then one day around 13 months, she ate nearly a 1/2 cup of avocado, and that was it - food was good. I stopped pumping a month later and kept her on formula instead of cow’s milk until age 2, but it was more and more supplemental as she ate more and more food.

So I take the 6 month point as the point where, if you want and if the baby wants, you can play around with food. But be aware that you’re only half of the deciders here. :wink:

6

My daughter doesn’t like “milk” (non-booby milk), never did. Still doesn’t. I breastfed her until she was a month shy of two. She decided, on her own, that she didn’t “want more boobies”. She still doesn’t drink milk, she finds it disgusting.

So, a benefit to breastfeeding is that my child had an excellent source of calcium for almost two years. It takes two to breastfeed. :slight_smile:

7

I’m guessing you would be weaning to formula? Regular milk is not recommended for babies under 12 months. Breastmilk is better than formula for the first six months, so I assume it would be for the next 6 months too.

If you wait to wean until the baby’s a bit older you can skip bottles altogether too.

Also, in my experience, the calming aspect of nursing was a “secret weapon” that was more useful as the baby got older.

8

Both mine BFed for years, not months.

Of course, the term “weaning” refers to the process of ingesting anything other than breastmilk, so it begins at 6 mths or whenever the child begins to eat anything else, even if only a nibble here and there and continues until they no longer nurse at all and get all their nourishment from solid food.

And BFing means nursing at all; by the time they reach a year or beyond, the frequency has declined dramatically, usually down to once a day or less.

From a nutritional standpoint, children require some form of milk for at least 1 yr., preferable longer. If they are not getting human milk, they must be given formula or cow’s milk (formula is recomended)
I always found it silly to wean them completely from the breast (since I didn’t have to) and start them on formula when I was producing an ideal milk already for free.

As for physical harm, such as rotten teeth, when a child nurses it pulls the nipple far into the mouth and the milk goes down the throat, it doesn’t pool on the teeth as can happen with a bottle, which requires much less suction to extract the milk.

Some suggest that nursing a child in bed or to sleep can damage the teeth, since there is a chance of the milk pooling on the teeth, but this was never a problem with anyone I knew. Breast milk has different sugars than formula and also doesn’t continue to leak out once active sucking has ceased.

Another benefit is that the strong sucking required to BF encourages the proper development of the jaw and also helps keep the ear canal well drained, possibly helping prevent ear infections.

The child also continues to receive immune benefits from the mother as long as they nurse, both in the form of general, non-specific immune cells which persist for life and specific immunities the mother’s body produces upon exposure to pathogens and passes on to the child.

And for the picky toddler, BFing provides a back-up nutritionally. Not to mention that it can be very helpful during times when they can’t or won’t eat anything else due to illness (as happened when my DD was 18 mths old and had to be hospitalized for 2 days and was placed on a liquid diet and had she NOT still been nursing, she would have been miserable and starved. Plus nursing comforted her tremendously.)

So yes, there are benefits to nursing beyond 6 mths. and I think just the fact that human infants need the nutrition from milk beyond 6 mths is pretty solid evidence that they are meant to nurse at least a yr. (by nature).

If you look at the average life spans, gestational periods and average period of nursing of other mammals, as one anthropologist did, it is reasonable to conclude that the “normal” duration of nursing in humans is closer to 2-3 years than 6 mths. And this is more in line with traditional practices in many cultures.

9

Fron the research I’ve done, and like Stathol points out in his/her excellent reply, the only harm comes from an supposed upper limit in the number of calories a woman can produce with her own milk. Also, some books say (no scientific cite though) that there is a sort of window of opportunity for babies to get them interested in solids. Their supposed to have more natural curiosity in mouthign anything from the cat to a piece of baby-cookie. But that seems to me a case of YBMMV (Your Baby’s Mileage May Vary)

Yes, I would be “weaning” (indeed, not quite the proper term) to formula for babies over six months. I wasn’t nursing him before; we quit nursing after three months, when I had to return to work, and I’ve been pumping and bottlefeeding him the breastmilk since then.

Those arguments are interesting, and sound likely to be true. However, since there are so many baby’s thriving on formula as well, I’d like to see a cite of how large this benefit is, statistically, and what other factors may influence it.