Reply to To the woman breastfeefing her 4 year old at the table at Wild Tomato...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow.  Lots of judgment here (not that I wasn't expecting it).

First, I think breastfeeding a toddler or older in public is just asking for trouble.

But I also think there are quite a lot of small minded posters making lots of assumptions as to why anybody would breastfeed past 12 months.

I breastfed my two sons until 6-7 months.

My youngest (a girl) is still nursing at 25 months.  To be perfectly honest, I pretty much hate it, but she is really really attached.  I am a WOHM and so the only time she nurses is at night.  And not every night either.  I truly don't get anything out of it other than wanting to comfort my daughter.  I've tried to wean a number of times.  In fact, I even went away for 3 nights (had to pump a few times) and thought she'd be done.  Nope.  And so there it is.  I don't nurse in public and I don't think I'm somehow ruining my daughter.  For whatever reason, she just isn't ready to wean.

So for all the haters - tell me why I should wean her other than that it seems "gross" or "weird" to you.  It is natural for her and while I personally am getting very sick of it, I am not ready for that fight with her...[/quote]

Picking up on this side thread about why to wean a toddler (when you the mom are over it . . . . )

I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with breastfeeding at 25 months or longer.  And I would never tell you what to do.  But I think it's important to consider your feelings, especially at this point.  As they say, nursing is a partnership, and when one partner is done, it may well be time to let it go.

For us, that was not so easy -- my DC#2 did not self wean like DC#1 did.  And by 15 months I was pretty much done with nursing.

But weaning before DC#2 was willing to give it up voluntarily was more difficult than I expected.  It took a good 3 weeks of DH doing the first and last milks of the day before DC would stop groping/crying if I were in the room.  Also, I realized how automatic it had become for me to soothe DC with nursing, so I had to find other effective ways to soothe/comfort at that age.  There were plenty -- I just had to break my own habit of whipping it out when DC was upset.  :-)

In the end, it probably took a little more than a month before everyone was completely comfortable and settled in to the new routine.  (Very different than when DC#1 weaned herself in a week.)

The upside:  DC is quite noticeably more attached to DH than before I weaned.  Those three weeks of feedings without me bonded them in a whole new way.  It's wonderful for everyone, and it mitigates any lingering wistfulness I have about weaning before DC led the way.  (Yes, though I was completely sick of it and my head said I was ready to stop, my heart was sometimes a bit sad about it . . . probably hormones!)  :-)

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