past few days and some thoughts on extended breastfeeding

spent 24 hours in minot -- or rather, in deering at the farm -- while dust had to go to a work thing in minot. even though i wasn't able to connect with my folks or our minot friends, it was a good chance for oskar to have some one-on-one time with dustin's parents. we'll be in minot the weekend of jan. 15 and hopefully we can catch up with everyone that weekend at some central location that we can all get to and have our kids at. ideas, anyone?

on the topic of long-term nursing... (and this is in NO WAY a condemnation of anyone who chooses to bottle feed, this is just my two cents on nursing in general. i'm all about choice on it.)

some people get freaked out by nursing in general, let alone nursing a child how can indicate that he would like to nurse. i don't plan on nursing him until he's in school, but i do kind of follow the mindset that kids know when it's their time to be done. here are a few key things that i like about it (i'm relaying the facts from two different articles) :

• World opinion is on your side. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially recommends mothers breastfeed until three years of age. That's right, THREE.

• For mothers, certain benefits of breastfeeding are cumulative and the longer a woman breastfeeds her children the greater she reduces her risk of developing various diseases. Lactation reduces a mother's risk of developing ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, uterine cancer, breast cancer and osteoporosis. A woman who nurses her baby for at least a year effectively reduces her risk of developing breast cancer by 11%. If she nurses her toddler through age 2, she reduces her risk of developing breast cancer by 25%. If a mother breastfeeds her children for a cumulative seven years over her lifetime, her risk of developing breast cancer is almost entirely reduced. )

• Studies show that the longer and more frequently a mom nurses her baby, the smarter her child is likely to become. The brain grows more during the first two years of life than any other time, nearly tripling in size from birth to two years of age.

• Breastfeeding is also an exercise in baby reading, which enables a mother to more easily read her toddler's cues and intervene before a discipline situation gets out of hand.

all those are really important points to mention, but here's what i dig: when a baby is, well, a baby, they nurse because that is how they survive. they do it because that's how they are programmed, if you will. then they get older, and some babies wean earlier on their own, and milk supplies don't always cooperate how you'd like them to.

however when they get older and they are still nursing (at which point it's coined "comfort nursing," as it's more for nurturing than nutritional content), they totally get it. you can see how they look at you while nursing and they know it's a really cool, awesome thing that you are doing for them -- and for you, as long as it still works for the both of you.

that's the key point -- it has to work for BOTH mom and baby. and sometimes it won't work out that way, and that's okay, too. this is something that works for us -- largely because i have a schedule that is very accommodating to it.

i know that soon enough -- in the next few months -- oskar will start his own self-weaning process and we'll gradually decrease until we're down to the one comfort nursing time of day -- bedtime. that is the last one to go usually. for now i'm going to enjoy this time while it lasts.

well there it is. there's my GAJILLION cents on how i'm still nursing oskar and i think it's pretty cool.