The Road to Extended Nursing...

[jodieanneanton]

Wondering about the process leading you mamas to extended nursing. I love hearing the stories of nursing moms and thought I would share mine!

What were your thoughts about nursing before your pregnancy? During your Pregnancy?
What were your nursing goals when you had your child/children?
If you didn't think you'd ever nurse past a year, what brought you past a year?
Are you still nursing? How old is your nursling? (or, if weaned, how old was your child when he/she weaned?)
Have you nursed through a pregnancy/tandemed?

I never thought I would breastfeed until about 6 months before I conceived dd1. Once I learned the benefits of breastfeeding, I was determined to give it a try and go for at least 6 weeks. Once I got to 6 weeks, I figured I would nurse my first until 6 months. That came and I decided to follow AAP's recommendation of 12 months, but figured I would wean around then. It wasn't until my first was 1 that I became totally and utterly dedicated to CLW and extended nursing. It was then that I started telling those questioning my decision to nurse beyond a year about what the WHO says about two years or longer. Now, dd1 is almost 3 and there seems to be no end in sight as she nursed through my entire pregnancy when my milk dried up around month 6. Now I am tandeming with her and dd2 (1 month).

Never thought I would be a nursing mom of two!!!

Looking forward to your stories!

[foodymama]

I too never anticipated nursing this long. I was very mainstream until I met DH who went to a holistic doctor and had no faith in mainstream ideas. I really thought he was a quack at first, lol! But I love doing research and started looking stuff up for myself and I slowly came on board with more natural ways of doing things. So when I became pregnant with DD I first researched vaccines because of a bad personal experience with them and that led me to Mothering and Attachment Parenting which in turn introduced me to all the other wonderful aspects of living naturally with children.

Before I became pregnant I knew I wanted to breastfeed but I had a lot of apprehension about it because no one else in my very large family ever did it so I had no advice and really no support. I read all the horror stories of babies being allergic to breastmilk or mother's having extremely low milk supply. My sister had my nephew 4 mo. prior to DD being born and she thought she would breastfeed but had an emergency c-section due to pre-eclampsia and my nephew was premature and in the NICU and he was never able to latch on. So I saw my sister's failure at it and I was determined from that point on that I would breastfeed no matter what!

I did have those preconceived notions that children who could talk shouldn't be nursing anymore but that all went out the window with a wonderful, very healthy and happily breastfed baby. I also listened to that inner voice and it said it was just the right thing to do and I think I will nurse until DD says she doesn't want to anymore.

[CoBabyMaker]

What a fun thread!
I always figured I would nurse to a year and never really thought of any reason not to. (Haha, if I'd only known the challenges I would face. It's a good thing I educated myself eventually!) I certainly grew up with the idea that nursing in public was not ok (without a cover) and that nursing past a year was "weird". The usual, "when they can ask for it, it's not ok" thing. When I was pregnant with DD I was on another message board where some of the women nursed past a year, there were just a lot of things in general that were different from how I grew up. At that point I had at least looked into BF a little more. I decided I should look into WHY people were making these "different" choices. I started to realize that there was GREAT reason to keep nursing past a year, along with a lot of other things.
My original goal was 18 months. We're at 22 months now. I'm pregnant and she doesn't show any signs of wanting to stop. We'll see what happens from here!