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  • mmm. very interesting read. thanks for posting that.
    xx
  • very interesting, but i wont be breastfeeding at 5 years! i do fully intend to go to at least a year though.
  • That's really interesting, and reinforces why lots of people call the nursing of toddlers 'natural term breastfeeding' and not 'extended breastfeeding'.

    I hope to feed DS until he wants to stop, and if he still wants to feed at 3 or 4 years of age I would be happy to let him continue. I might bookmark this resource to help explain this choice to the people who can't understand 'what good it does at that age'.
  • V interesting article - and makes me glad that my mum went against all the pressure to bottle feed in the 70's when I was born. She tells me that in a ward of 12 mums she was the only one bf'ing and got a hard time off the nurses because they 'couldn't tell how much baby had taken' image lol!

    Personally I'm not sure about the figures and stats she comes up with - to me it's a bit like 'playing with numbers' - but I am a firm believer that bf'ing is all good and should be more socially acceptable into toddler-hood at the very least.

    I'm proud to have bf for as long as I did - I'm finished with it all now (dd stopped at 26 mths) but for all you ladies worried about your boobs: I bf 3 babies for a total of 52 months - and finally gave up feeding dd in Feb this year. Tbh I was worried about the state of my boobs - but they are fine - bounced back to a 36B no probs!!!

    Sorry if I lowered the tone a bit there lol! xx
  • lol tottie i intend to bf as long as i can to keep my boobs big!!!!
  • I'll keep bf for as long as I can as it means I can have extra calories each day :lol:
    Did you read her other articles, she has some quite extreme views, I think wanting taxes and health warnings on tins of formula may be a step too far.
  • I'm not sure about this article. Did you know that the actual gestation period for a human is 18 months but we cannot keep the child in there long enough to achieve this? That's why they're born so helpless and unable to do anything. Baby calves can walk and baby dogs/kittens take five days max before they can walk. Some mammals abandon their children at birth because they can survive. So research in this area, even with primates, is something to be desired.

    We were never meant to cook our food or eat many of the things we do. Our nutrients and need for some substances have changed because of this and is why our appendix is useless to us now. You could argue this would lead to a change in our milk for our babies where other satiation is needed earlier..as man as become more modern we lose our connection with the raw nature found in primates. In actual fact some scientists, sociologists and anthroplogists argue that we have devolved as a species. I don't feel a child would be able to survive on breastmilk or any milk alone for 1 year never mind 5

  • . I don't feel a child would be able to survive on breastmilk or any milk alone for 1 year never mind 5



    They certainly can. I know several children who didn't start solids till 12 or even 15 months and are perfectly healthy. Weaning onto solids at 1 yr used to be the norm, still is in many countries.
  • Fair enough. But if that's the case then why don't WHO advise 12m exclusive bf?

    I do remember studying different tribes in Africa and their child rearing differences and even in asia it's the norm to be breastfed for a long time and staying in close proximity to your mother and other lactating mothers just incase. I have actually been approached by a lady in town who offered to breastfeed my child for me as he was going ape whilst I was in a marks and spencer changing room *sigh* lol

    I've also heard of Nestle giving mothers free SMA in developing countries, only for them to stop providing it a few months later and charging mothers for the milk later..so sad

    but anyway, I see your point mrs setters, but would you say the same for a formula fed baby? I mean breastmilk is so much better and so different I assume forumla milk can only take a child so far?
  • When people talk about bf 5yr olds, or even 2yr olds, I always assume they mean in addition to normal food - did she mean excl bf'ing 5yr olds??

    I'm sure I read that a baby can thrive on nothing but breastmilk for the first 2yrs - but it's not necessary in our culture as we have the ability to wean babies earlier.

  • Yeah she meant exclusively. X
  • weaning means taking a baby off breastmilk (ie weaning them off), not introducing soilds, which is a seperate action. it's just that usually the two are done at the same time. where does it say she meant no solids until 5? i missed that part.
  • Oooh, ok, in my post I meant weaning as introducing solids - but always did find the term 'weaning' confusing lol!

  • And on and on. The minimum predicted age for a natural age of weaning in humans is 2.5 years, with a maximum of 7.0 years.

    5. A comparison of weaning age and sexual maturity in non-human primates suggests a weaning age of 6-7 for humans (about half-way to reproductive maturity).


  • When she mentions weaning in primates, she means exclusive nursing..which of to be used in comparison with humans implies exclusivity too, otherwise the comparison is a correlation
  • if the who did advise ebf until 12 months, people some peeople would still say it's nonsense and start with solids at 14 weeks., with chocolate

    nestle did do tht in the 70s and it was terrible. the amount of babies that dies because of it. even introducing formula instead of breastmilk was an awful thing to do, without charging for it when the mothers own milk had dred up. formula just isnt safe in those conditions.
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