Lactnuts all,

Thought you'd enjoy a quasi-scientific survey....OK, not at all scientific
survey I just completed.  I'm on a listserv of attachment parents (mostly
moms, though a couple of dads lurk here & there), and someone mentioned how
long she had breastfed.  So I offered to compile and crunch numbers if they
would send them to me.  Partially I did it because in the latest edition of
Babywise there is a claim that mothers who followed PDF breastfed an average
of 33 weeks.  He calls it a "convenient sampling of over 240 mothers...and on
average, PDF moms breast-feed (sic) an average of 33.2 weeks." (p 63) So, I
did my own "convenient sampling" of AP moms.  These are the results:

78 moms reported in; total of 222 children.  The average length of time a
child was breastfed was 99 weeks (23 months); the average length of time a
mother breastfed was 97 weeks.  Almost three times longer than mothers who
followed scheduled (routine) feedings.

Many of the mothers that reported were still breastfeeding the last child --
numerous reports of -- "17 months and still going strong...."  Lots of tandem
nursing.  One mom of twins had been nursing 103 weeks and was still nursing
(she had some really funny stories about nursing the twins -- it was great!)

Anyway, I thought this might perk everyone's spirits up since half our posts
end up being about moms and babies who won't nurse, or who quit before they
want to...

Jan Barger, in sunny Wheaton where she should be getting ready for a
conference instead of turning months into weeks and pounding a calculator!

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