Hi Pardee,

I enjoyed reading about your lengthy nursing of your three children,
especially the comment about how you were sorry you had weaning your son at
4 1/2 yrs. - calling it *early* weaning! If time on the breast and
ammenorhea are conducive to lower incidence of cancer, etc. you are in like
Flynn (whoever *he* is!)

I nursed my son (now 17) 3 yrs.8mo and my daughter 3 yrs.....and when
giving my 2 hr. monthly class to the pregnant moms someone always asks,
early on during the class, "Roberta, How long did you nurse your children?"
I usually say that I'll tell them how long, but not until the very end of
the class, after they have all the basic hormonal, technical and
emotional/pychological reasons for nursing 'under their belt'.
At the end of the class I ask them if they don't perhaps know of a little
brother, nephew, or neighbor  who still (at age 2 or 3 or 4) uses a
pacifier, or drinks a baby bottle of chocolate milk, or whatever to go to
sleep at night.
Invariably, they all nod that, yes, lots of 'big' children still suck their
thumbs, suck on a bottle, etc. at that age.

"Well", I reply, (here comes my personal experience), "both my kids nursed
for 3 years ( a not-shocked but rather interested silence follows this
revelation) "Naturally the last year sometimes 12 even 15 hours would go by
without a nursing session, but the breast was there when they really wanted
or needed it."
             The motto is: Don't offer but don't deny.
Then, I comment on how my husband always like the fact that *I* was the
children's security object...rather than having their security object be an
actual *thing* - like a bottle, pacifier, blanket,favorite toy etc.

When it is explained THIS way....at the *end* of the class, and putting it
into the *real* cultural perspective, they somehow don't seem as shocked as
they might have been at the beginning of the class.

I agree that just tossing off the fact that we all went beyond 4 ot 5 mo.
of BF....is a bit shocking to hear when you've still got the little
fellow/fella inside your tummy. I also mention that I had absolutely no
idea that I was going to nurse for (gosh!) 3 yrs! Heavens! I just tell them
that you take each month as it comes...and the time moves forward.
When, at the first month your baby has gained 800gm.-1000gms & has not been
sick at all, while your sister-in-law/neighbor/bestfriend's infant has
suffered an infection and needed antibiotics.....well, it makes you just
want to keep on trucking down the Milky Way Trail.

Saludos from Old Mexico,

Roberta