Breastfeeding for too long.

I haven't visited this blog for a while. Facebook has become my default mode of expression - short bursts of info or quick links are all I can seem to coordinate these days. And I am so grateful for the feed back I receive on that site - such great motivation to keep working on this film!!

But I had an experience last night that I wanted to share (maybe I'll post it there, too!). I feel like I have shared this here and elsewhere, but it bears repeating. This is one of the big areas of breastfeeding misinformation - so wildly perpetrated in the media.

I was at a documentary screening last night talking with a fellow filmmaker about my film. She asked, "What are you going to say about people who breastfeed their babies for too long?" I asked what she defined as TOO long. She said 2 years. This started an interesting dialogue - I shared my experience of being pregnant and believing I would stop "when he can ask for it" and then going on to nursing my son for 2.5 years. We talked about how you realize pretty early on that babies "ask for it" when they are teeny tiny. And you also realize that at one, when our American Ped. Assoc. recommends you can stop (essentially what they are saying with that guideline, I think) that they are babies! Still so small, and the milk, although they are eating solid foods and you are nursing less, is still so important and does so much!

I don't know if I changed any minds, but I'm happy to have these conversations. And I feel like each one is a lesson for me - as there is so much that I wish I would have said. I wish I would have shared the story of nursing an 18-month old with a stomach virus (thank goodness I was still nursing!!) and how the breastmilk was the only thing that would stay down, it provided hydration, nutrients, antibodies and antibiotics to my son for the 6 days he was very ill. And the nursing provided a lot of comfort to him, too. I also wish I would have been more clear about what it looks like to nurse a toddler. That it's once or twice a day, for only a few minutes, at that age. It occurred to me later that I bet she thinks it was a huge part of his diet, and that perhaps I was depriving him of something that she thought of as more normal, than just supplementing her version of a "normal" diet. Does this make sense?

I did mention that the World Health Organization recommends 2 years - and that the worldwide average is up to 7 years. She roared with laughter over than and made comments I couldn't quite understand about China and Africa...one thing I didn't say was that if you've made it to one year, chances are more likely that you are nursing past that, but that a huge percentage of women who do, because of attitudes like hers, keep it at home and you probably don't know.

Looking forward to more conversations like this!