Dear Diane and others, I have been following this thread of "normal" weaning times with interest. I especially appreciated your animal analogy ie. mare kicking away the foal etc. and thought that was a great way to illustrate the mother's role, at times, the dance as it is so aptly described. Although I enjoy the discussion and exploration of the dynamics of the mother-baby relationship in terms of weaning times, I bristle at the thought of charactering a set age range as "normal". We need to remember that very few mothers (comparatively speaking) nurse their babies beyond a year and of the ones that do most wean before age 2. I realize that this is only disscusion but we wouldn't want to alienate just educate. I also feel it is important to include the dynamic of, for lack of a better term, "mother-led nursing" ie. those Moms whose 18 mth old shows all the signs that she is ready to wean but the Mom doesn't want to...We have to believe that if the former exists, the latter does as well. As an anecdotal aside, my number 2 and 3 children had some subtle GI type probs when weaned and switched exclusively to cow's milk at 15 and 16 mths respectively ie. frequent, loose stool,? lactose problems- that persist today, intermittently, at 5 and 11 yrs of age, thus I wish I had nursed longer........AS has been discussed MAnY times there is litlle or no support for that, unless you are involved with La Leche, but that launches another thread for another time! Lynn Shea Rn,Bsn, Ibclc Franklin, Massachusetts, where spring is hinting- no flowers yet! *********************************************** 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