I too have had personal experience with this.

The second time I was pregnant, I experienced pre-term labor.  I had
weaned my older daughter about 2 months before I had this problem (which
started at about 33 weeks), so breastfeeding was not  the issue that
time.  But that experience (and by the way, I didn't deliver prematurely
after all) made me more anxious about pre-term delivery in subsequent
pregnancies.

So before I became pregnant the third time, I asked my family physician
if she would reccommend that I wean my second child when I became
pregnant again.  She said that that would not be something she would
necessarily insist on, but just urged me to be very aware of any
contractions or feelings of pressure (which was my symptom in my 2nd
pregnancy) and never hesitate to give her a call and I could come in to
the office and she could see if these contractions were actually making
my cervix open up.  Also, as I got further along in my pregnancy, she
would check this fairly often.  I ended up weaning my 22 month old
fairly quickly at the end of my third trimester.  Her nursing was
causing contractions, which just made me uncomfortable and anxious.  In
retrospect, I don't think that it was causing me to dilate though.

I tend to have a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions and do start to
dilate weeks before I deliver.   With my last pregnancy I do remember
having an episode of contractions at about 33 weeks which occured
shortly after my 3 yr. old had nursed.  Because she was old enough to
reason with, I decided I would cut her off at that point (she was only
nursing once a day for about 5 minutes), but I told her she could go
back to nursing if she wanted when the baby was born.  (She didn't.)

Looking back, I don't think the nursing would have caused contractions
that really would have put me into labor, but at the time stopping
nursing eased my mind.

Jeanne
LLLLeader in WI, USA

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