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Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
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Thu, 16 Nov 2000 10:38:09 EST
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OK, getting my flameproof suit on but -- I had a lot of empathy for the mom
with the poem.   No, it was not purely child led weaning, clearly.   And yes,
there was clearly more going on that she describes in the message we got to
read.

But it was also clear that this was a mother who basically did want to wean,
and in some ways probably had wanted to for a while, who had waited until she
felt she saw enough signs in her child that it was going to be a very small,
rather than a great, trauma.   Probably her daughter would have been stronger
and more ready a while later; but also clearly the child was already thinking
about it, and moving toward it, on her own.   This was not like a one year
old for whom weaning is a terrifying reversal of motherness -- it was clearly
accompanied by love that the child could feel and work with.

When you think about the kind of "well, whatever you can do is great" support
we give to folks who expected to nurse for 2 weeks and instead nurse for a
year, I would hate to think that once we know you were ready to nurse for a
year we will despise you as insufficiently committed if you achieve anything
less than truly child-led weaning.

Life's a negotiation, and overall this mom seems to me to have done pretty
well.

I have a friend who for various reasons had begun to long for her 2.5 year
old daughter's weaning, and planned a weaning party, which all of her friends
attended.  It was mother led, but the mother saw her job as supporting her
child through a transition that the mother needed her to make.   It just
wasn't black and white, no more than most other relational things are.

Elisheva
trying to remember to walk a mile in other people's shoes

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