Hi,

I am 45. I had my daughter when I was 44 and I hope to nurse her for many
years.

Boy, do I feel nervous when I start reading statments that we mothers
produce less milk. Since it strikes me that there are no studies that show
anything, can we refrain from making such statements? I see a lot of harm
coming from these statements. "Well, you know, deary, what do you expect,
after all you are over 40." I see them preventing a breastfeeding helper
 from looking for the real souces of inadequate milk production.

The following is anedoctal information.

When I gave birth last year to my premature 1485 grm daughter, I basically
could have fed the entire special care baby nursery, containing at that time
15 babies, for the three weeks that my daughter was there. Before I left at
night for home, I would ask the nurses to check to see if there was enough
fresh milk for my daughter, milk less than 24 hours, they would return
saying they did not bother to count since the refrigertor was overflowing
with containers of my milk.

It took me two full weeks to reduce my milk supply till I was producing only
what she needed after her discharge. I pumped only 6 times in 24 hours, half
the number of nursings a newborn needs, and this was before my let down
reflex was working. The let down only started working at about 6 weeks. Gee,
I wonder what would have happened if my let down reflex, spontaneous and non
spontaneous and leaking, would have started to work earlier. Maybe I could
have fed the regular nursery babies as well.

I never thought about maybe being too old. I simply did everything that I
know to produce enough milk. And I did this while recovering from major
surgery and the trauma from the birth and dealing or not dealing with the
stresses from 6 other children.

From my experience as a breastfeeding helper, I have never found the
problems of inadequate milk supply stemming from age, but from poor
breastfeeding management, poor latch on, or mom's medical problems that
manytimes have been around a long time.  Mothers giving birth over the age
of 40 are very common, where I live. It does happen from time to time that a
mother of the bride is expecting.

One very common problem for the first time mother who has a established
career or for the mother who has many children, is NOT to nurse her infant a
sufficient number of times or a sufficient lenght of time. Manytimes, I pick
up that these mothers are cutting short feeds. I find that they are not
aware of this. They do it without thinking because they are trying to
continue full time careers from their homes or because they are caring for a
house full of children. This is hard to catch over the phone. The obvious
clue to me with a mother of many children is the amount of noise in the
background. I spend time asking a mother what she is doing in her daily
life. This uncovers a lot.

If anyone would like to discuss nursing and the older mother in more detail,
contact me at my e-mail address.

An older breastfeeding mom who is still not over the hill,

Devorah

PS My husband just loves those comments, "Oh, is this your granddaughter? To
which he answers, "No, this is my daughter!" And then he gets the usual,
"Oh!"