>Mother A: "The longest any one (of my children) has nursed is only 16 mos,
>but that seems to be typical of babies of
>OAMER....they never really learn to comfort nurse."
>
>Mother B: "I had a terrible overactive MER w/ my dd, but she learned to
>comfort-nurse, nursed well at night (lying across my chest all night)
>and nursed until 5yr."

This is *such* a cool example of our need to "raise the bar" within the
profession.  We're pretty good at getting babies to a year, but what about
the ones who wean between a year and, say, 2 years?  When a mother tells me
her child weaned at 7 months, I know she could have used some help.  When
she tells me her child weaned at 4 years, I don't give it another thought
(though conceivably another generation of LCs will.)  But what about the one
who weans at 14 months?  Was the weaning influenced by bfing management?
Cultural expectations?  The way solids were introduced or sleep was
structured?  Was it a perfectly normal weaning and I needn't give it another
thought?  What's a problem we can help a mother avoid and what's just a
combination of normal events and personalities that represents one end of
the bell curve?  We really don't know much about the Brave New World that
leads up to toddler nursing (or beyond).

It's exciting to think of the learning we have ahead, the first step of
which is looking for nursing patterns that seem to be associated with
weaning at various ages past the age of one, just as we used to look for
patterns that led to weaning in the first few weeks.

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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