On this thread someone (Helen?) asked whether HCPs recommending stopping breastfeeding at a particular age believed it "turned to water".  Believe me, I heard these actual words from the lips of older women and at least one health professional, or former health professional, in the second half of the 1960s.  The age at which a mother's milk allegedly "turned to water' seemed to be whatever age her baby was at the time. Examples I heard were 7 months (stated emphatically by an ex-Army nurse) and 9 months. Health professionals of the time, even if they didn't believe this old Wives' Tale, considered 9 months the upper limit for breastfeeding. In the 1970s in Cairns in Far North Queensland, mothers who attended the local  baby clinic with a baby just turning 9 months were told they must wean - immediately.  The nurse would ring the mother's doctor to say the mother way on her way to get a prescription for drying up. I believe some of the early members of the Cairns ABA (then NMAA) group joined because of this experience. I haven't heard of staff at other baby clinics of the time ordering immediate drying up in this manner, though it is possible. So perhaps it was one individual being extra zealous and interpreting the standard advice to breastfeed for 9 months as meaning not one day longer..
Of course, compliance with clinic advice varied, expecially when mothers became more experienced. This is is discussed in my recently published article on the 1945-1965 period, the link to which I've already posted on Lactnet. Mothers who were breastfeeding beyond 9 months probably weren't attendees by then.
A leading Queensland paediatrician advocated 9 months of breastfeeding as essential as "exterior gestation", to complete the gestation process as the large head of the human species requires birth at an early stage of development. [Earnshaw PA. The baby's birthright: a plea for a return to exterior gestation and breast feeding. Med J Aust 1961 (18 Feb).]
Regasrds,
Virginia

Dr Virginia Thorley, OMA, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA
Private practice lactation consultant
Cultural historian of the History of Medicine
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Email: [log in to unmask] 
Websites; www.virginiathorley.com
               http://uq.edu.au/hprc/dr-virginia-thorley 

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