How valuable is nursing past a year?

[HoneyTree]

I just did a search on "child spacing," and found a lot of women choosing to space their children 2 or more years apart so that the older child has the full benefits of breastfeeding.

So my question is this: what is the relative value of nursing past the first year? How much nutrition is the child getting (assuming he or she has been on solids for at least a couple of months)? How useful are the antibodies to a toddler? What about the facial development?

The emotional benefits I well know, so I won't ask about those, but did I forget anything? If you can tell me more, please do!

TIA!

[isabchi]

Check this!

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/bfextended/ebf-benefits.html

[HoneyTree]

OK, having read that, the studies seem to indicate, then, that assuming a mother's milk would dry up during pregnancy (and is it true that 70% of all women's do? Mine did with #2 pregnancy...), then a mother is best serving the needs of her child if she waits for that child to wean before trying to conceive another?

ETA: What I'm really wondering is, do the benefits of breastfeeding for a toddler far outweigh the personal reasons for conceiving another child before the first has self-weaned, or does it become a kind of trade-off after a certain point?

[PatioGardener]

There is some work going on now to investigate the cognitive benefits of nursing beyond infancy. The results aren't in yet - but the researchers thought there was a reason to explore brain development and nursing into toddlerhood, so you may want to add that to your list as well.

Plus the facial/jaw development may reduce sleep apnea (again, no evidence for this yet, just biological plausibility.)

ETA: And known benefits for mom - reduced likelihood of breast and ovarian cancer.

[bandgeek]

Originally Posted by HoneyTree

ETA: What I'm really wondering is, do the benefits of breastfeeding for a toddler far outweigh the personal reasons for conceiving another child before the first has self-weaned, or does it become a kind of trade-off after a certain point?

IMO, yes to an extent. I wouldn't necessarily wait until a child self-weaned to get pregnant again, because some kids don't wean until they are school age, but I did purposely put off getting pregnant until my son was almost 2, because I felt the first two years were the most important to get a full milk supply to himself. That's just my opinion though, based on what I'd read. For me, 2 years is important. Other people might think only 6 months, some might feel 3-4 years is. My son didn't wean during my pregnancy though and got plenty of milk from before the time I lost my supply (it changed to colostrum so he did still benefit after) at about 2 years 3 months, and after DD was born when he was 2 years 9 months. Then he got plenty of milk from then until he was 3 1/2. I did notice that he got sick more often after I weaned him and that was the first winter I actually had to take him to the doctor. I absolutely don't regret letting him nurse for 2 full years before getting pregnant again.

[isabchi]

I get pregnant when my first one was 20 months old. I was really scare that pregnacy would be the cause of weanig my LO. She need to nurse so badly. Then,I had a miscarriage not relate to breastfeeding. I get pregnant again a little past of a year later. This time I nurse sucesefull through the pregnancy.Now, I still nursing my youngest (19mo) o demand and almost 5yo once a day.
In this almost 5 years my oldest in been sick twice. Stomach flu when she was 1 1/2 yo. and swine flu a couple months ago. In both cases very light syntoms. My youngest get the swine flu as everybody else at home, also with light symtoms Other than that not even a cold.

I don't have any scientific resources to this thinking, but I firmly believe .that nursing ecologically into the toddlerhood help them somehow to self regulate about the food intaken. Also, I believe that is important to nursing for the brain development, and the most basic is we're mammals, we definately need some kind of milk into the toddlerhood, so what is better than human milk for a human child, from the mother to her child.
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html

[HoneyTree]

Wow! What a cool article. And the little metaphor about the oil well got right to the heart of my question.