Kathy,

Talking about lay breastfeeding support groups reminded me of the first ABA
meeting I ever went to. A lady I knew was there with her two children and
half way through the meeting her 2yo climbed up on her lap for a suckle. My
jaw must've nearly hit the floor I was the suprised and it had never ocurred
to me that children that children that old breastfeed. Of course over time
and repeated observation of such phenomenon my outlook changed to such a
point that I *started* breastfeeding my adopted daughter when she was 3.5y
(still breastfeeding quite a bit at 5.5y).

I'm currently working on a study of breastfeeding into toddlerhood and
beyond in Australia looking at both the mum's and the child's experience. I
gave a talk to some LCs to be (sitting the ILCE this year) last Saturday. I
told them about the study and one of them asked me how old the oldest child
participating in the study was. When I said 7 years the gasps where audible
but there were no apologies or explanations and clearly I wasn't worried by
that and hopefully it caused some mind expansion.

Karleen Gribble
Australia

> Don't forget the importance of educating mothers (and fathers and other
> support or lack-of-support people in the mother's life) that human
children
> are designed to be breastfed for anywhere from 2.5 years to 7.0 years.
>

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