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 *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html