I always knew that I was going to breastfeed my son Jacob, but I never thought that I would do it for as long as I have. I had planned on breastfeeding Jacob for at least the first 6 months. It then extended until he was 9 months. Finally I accepted the fact that I was planning on breastfeeding him for quite awhile.
Jacob is now 18 months old, and is still not ready to stop breastfeeding, which is perfectually fine with me. However, many people tell me that what I am doing is wrong, or that I better be planning on stopping soon. Why do people have this attitude towards breastfeeding, that it should only be done in secret, and that it is only good for very young babies?
"Thoughts On Breastfeeding" by Katherine Dettwyler is an interesting look at non-human primates vs humans to show what really is natural for us to be doing with our young in terms of providing nutrition. According to her studies, we should be breastfeeding our children for a minimum of 2.5 years, and possibly for up to 7 years. It has some very interesting links to look at.
It seems that in our society, people believe that once a baby is 6 months old that a mother should put away her breast and reach for the cow's breast. Does no one seem to see the irony of this? Mothers are told to get their babies off of breast milk so thta they can start to drink cow's milk. Why on earth would cow's milk be preferable to human milk?
If you haven't realized yet, I have a real problem with cow's milk being forced down our throat by misleading slogans that force people to believe that cow's milk is needed to have a balanced diet. As this page is about breastfeeding and NOT about the evils of cow's milk, please go to Milk: It Does A Body Bad to better understand why I feel this way about the dairy industry.
What many people do not realize is that breastfeeding does much more than just provide the optimum nutrition for a child: it is also beneficial to the child's emotional and intellectual growth. There are alsso advantages to the mother by breastfeeding. The contact and stimulation that a child receives while breastfeeding increases the number of neural connections, which is what helps the brain to mature and grow. Stimulation is essential for a babies brain to grow properly, and by breastfeeding, this stimulation is provided very easily. Manny studies have been done that say that a breastfed infant is more intelligent to a bottle fed one.
The emotional attachment that a child has to his or her mother while breastfeeding is also very important. The breast becomes a place of security, of comfort. I ama constantly being told how I am hindering Jacob's emotional growth by allowing him to nurse when he is upset. It seems that people would much rather see him go off and suck his thumb or reach for an inanimate object than to reach out for human contact. To me, this is ridiculous. To become secure and emotionally stable, you must have stability first and know that everything will be okay. You have to constantly be reminded that you are loved and that there are others there for you when you need them. When Jacob is ready, he will no longer come and suckle at my breast for comfort. Right now, he is not ready to stop, and telling him that he can no longer do this would be very unfair, especially since I have no problem with him doing this.
The benefits to the mother are also numerous. A special bond is easily created between the mother and child. A hormone is released to let the milk down that helps the mother to relax, and thereby be given the opportunity to slow down for a minute. The mother's uterus contracts back down to pre-pregnancy size much easier. It is often much easier to lose the weight gained during pregnancy.
Breastfeeding is not always easy, though. The first 6 weeks are the worst. If you can survive that long, then it is worth it to continue. I remember being tempted many times to stop after breastfeeding every hour for half an hour at a time for days on end. It also did not help that the doctor was making me feel guilty, telling me that I shouldn't be feeding him that often (that I should only be feeding him every 2 or 3 hours), yet also saying that he wasn't gaining enough weight, and that I should start giving him something else. I perservered, and am very happy that I did.
The entire notion that Jacob was not gaining enough weight was ridiculous, as I later discovered that the numbers being used did not take it into consideration that Jacob was being breastfed. Breastfed babies and bottle fed babies gain weight differently, with breastfed babies gaining it more slowly and steadily for the first few years. It was only in the last few decades that a fat baby was considered a healthy image. Before that, a baby who was nice and slim was considered the picture of health. Why the change? It essentially came down to people wanting to show their wealth in how big their babies could be, as they saw big babies as representing "well fed and healthy" babies. All that I know is that Jacob is the healthiest baby I have ever known. He has never had an ear infection, only gets feverswhen he is teething (and even then it is only a fever, he is still happy and playful the entire time), and the only bouts of vomitting were directly related to a reaction to cow's milk in my breastmilk (although the doctor denies this, even though the vomitting, which had lasted for weeks, stopped completely when I had completely eliminated dairy products from my diet.)
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