To Wean or Not to Wean

Continued ...

What is Weaning?

"From a nutritional standpoint, weaning is a gradual transition from breastmilk meeting all of the baby's needs to other foods meeting those needs," Montgomery says. "Weaning from a psychodevelopmental standpoint is also a gradual transition from having all needs met by mom to a healthy self-reliance appropriate for a child's age. Both are important, and both have an appropriate endpoint which will vary somewhat from child to child and family to family."

The weaning process begins when the first solid foods are introduced. Babies not only begin experiencing the different tastes and textures of new foods, but also begin exploring their world with rolling, crawling and walking. Venturing farther and farther from mom begins the gradual emotional weaning.

True child-led weaning means that the mother does not interfere with the nursing process, nor encourage weaning by withholding the breast from a willing child.

So what can a mother committed to gradual physical and emotional weaning expect from her toddler?

"Every baby is different," says Kathleen G. Auerbach, PhD, coauthor of Breastfeeding and Human Lactation, a textbook for healthcare providers. "Toddlers nurse in a variety of patterns, as do newborns. This is obvious to mothers who have nursed more than one baby."

A study of women who practiced child-led weaning in the U.S. showed the average weaning age to be two and half to three years. Researchers also said that extended breastfeeding has documented benefits and that health practitioners should support mothers who choose child-led weaning.

The Mother's Perspective
Marti Grahl, a 32-year-old mother of three from Hagerstown, Maryland, found nursing her toddler to have many practical benefits. After weaning her first child, now six, at around five months, Grahl committed herself to breastfeeding longer with her second daughter, now two, although she took that commitment a step at a time. First she committed to six months of breastfeeding, then 12 months. After a year, the months just began ticking by.

Rachel, her two year old, still nurses frequently, even though Grahl is pregnant with her third child. Grahl finds that extended breastfeeding has provided options for comfort that she did not have with Emilee, her first daughter. From a practical standpoint, she had more to offer Rachel.

"It's very soothing for both of us," Grahl says. "With Rachel, it's much easier to find the right solution than with Emilee. Rachel is so much more at peace with herself than Emilee was at her age."

Dr. William Sears, an internationally renowned pediatrician and author of The Baby Book and more than 20 other childrearing books, says that the mother who nurses a toddler often has Grahl's experience. Sears has seen thousands of breastfeeding couples in his more than 25 years of pediatric practice. He says that mothers of nursing toddlers find themselves looking at life from the child's point of view more often, searching for solutions to typical toddler problems in a way that the child can relate to. The mother will be more apt to support the child. "The main difference in nursing a toddler is discipline," he says. "A nursing mom will get behind her toddler. Suppose the child spills (something). A nursing mother will see things through the child's eyes."

Kateri Rein, a 29-year-old expectant mother of a two year old from Richmond, Virginia, found other practical reasons for nursing her toddler. Since her daughter, Caroline, suffered from food allergies, it only made sense to keep her on breastmilk as long as possible, Rein says. By doing so, she kept Caroline's rashes to a minimum. Caroline thrived despite not going strong on solids until she was 18 months old.

Rachel Cash, a 25-year-old mother of two from Willits, California, finds that nursing her 14 month old was extra special after weaning her three year old at six months. "I decided to do things differently with my second," she says. "I love the feeling that I get when we are together. It is something nobody in this world can give her. When she is next to me, I know that she is safe, and nothing will or can happen to her."

Can You Breastfeed Too Long?
U.S. societal norms, some experts say, place unrealistic and possibly damaging expectations on moms and babies when it comes to weaning. Many women who nurse longer than one year feel a need to remain secretive, sometimes not even sharing the fact that their baby is still nursing with their doctors. "I just choose not to nurse my toddler in front of people," Rein says.

Others simply wean early, emotionally upsetting themselves and their babies because they have been led to believe by misguided friends or family that a child needs to "grow up."

Grahl, for instance, never knew anyone who nursed more than just a few weeks when her first daughter, Emilee, was born five years ago. She only recently "came out of the closet" and nursed her two year old, Rachel, in public.

Auerbach says women should feel perfectly normal breastfeeding in private if that's how they feel comfortable. Nursing a toddler in private is a wonderful way to continue sharing the relationship without feeling societal pressure to wean prematurely.

"There are many women who are nursing well beyond the "appropriate" time in a predominately bottle-feeding culture," she adds, "and they do so in the privacy of their home."

Montgomery says that a mother has been nursing too long when the nursing is the only positive interaction between mother and child.

Dettwyler stressed the fact that children are not truly capable of mothering themselves for several years, not several months. "Our culture is way out of whack regarding when independence should happen, especially when it comes to self-comforting," she says. "Many people struggle and struggle to toilet train their two year old, for example, not realizing that most two year olds are not capable of being toilet trained. Wait until your child is three or three and half and say 'Here's the toilet, and this is how it works' and let your child see you using the toilet often. Then there's no struggle."

"The idea that a two or three year old should be able to self-mother," she adds, "has no substantiation." "Advocating that children suck their thumbs, fingers, or pacifiers instead of sucking on mom or insisting that they cling to blankets or teddy bears instead of to mom in order to go to sleep, or to be comforted has no basis in any scientific research."

This article originally appeared in the Nov/Dec issue of Mother magazine.
Breastfeeding.com thanks Kelly Griffith for allowing
her article to be posted here.

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Notes
1. J. Newman, "How Breastmilk Protects Babies," Mothering 82 (Spring 1997): 63-65.

2. Kathleen G. Auerbach and J. Riordan, Breastfeeding and Human Lactation (London: Jones and Bartlett Publishers International, 1993), 357.

3. Ibid., 105-134.

4. K. Dettwyler and P. Stuart-Macadam, Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspecitives (New York; Walter de Gruyter, 1995) 39-73.

5. E. E. Gulick, "The Effects of Breastfeeding on Toddler Health," Pediatric Nursing 12 no. 1 (1986): 51-54.

6. D. L. Johnson et al., "Breastfeeding and Children's Intelligence," Psychol Rep 79, np. 3 (December): 1179-1185.

W. J. Rogan and B. C. Gladen, "Breastfeeding and Cognitive Development," Early Human Development 3 (January 31, 1993): 181-193.

M. Morrow-Tlucak, et al. "Breastfeeding and Cognitive Development in the First Two Years of Life," Soc Sci Med 26, no. 6 (1998): 635-639.

C. I. Lanting et al., "Neurological Differences between 9-year-old Children Fed Breastmilk or Formula," Lancet 344, no. 8933 (November 12, 1984): 1319-1322.

7. K. T. Young et al. "The Commonwealth Fund Survey of Parents with Young Children," The Commonwealth Fund, 1996, B-4.