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When is a good age to stop breast feeding?

I am not asking for myself. I recently saw this woman breast feeding her child. The child had to be at least 2 or 3 years old. I was taken aback a little. The kid could speak full sentences and this lady kept popping out her boob to feed him. So my question is, when is a good age to stop breast feeding? Was that kid too old to still be breast feeding? Or am I just being weird. Let me know. Thanks!

Public Response to When is a good age to stop breast feeding?

  1. As a general rule, I'd say 12-18 months. My second child was born a bit over 9 pounds. At 13 months I felt like I was nursing a 2 year old. I stopped him at the 13 month mark and neither of us suffered. When I felt he was no longer a baby, it was time to stop. If the child can name the body part or pull it out themselves, it past time to stop!
  2. These mothers make me laugh. THey will also give me a thumbs down for this...but it is completely inappropriate for a child to breastfeed after they can say "boobie". I think there is something wrong with these mothers. Kudos to the breastfeeder and kudos to the bottlefeeders. And a child does NOT know when to wean themselves. Children do not know best...if they did, mine would only eat ice cream.
  3. It really is up to you when to stop breastfeeding...I stopped when my baby was 7 mo because thats when her teeth started coming in (ouchie!)...the lactation specialist says that "blessed is he/she that is breastfed until 3"...I've heard people say that they pumped their breasts and gave their child breastmilk until age 5...in my opinion, your question is one that you would have to answer yourself...screw what other people think!!
  4. marriage.
  5. once their first tooth grows in. ow that must of hurt!!!
  6. You're not being weird, but you are coming from a culture that doesn't accept the biological norm of breastfeeding. In some places in the country it's unusual to see nursing babies, let alone nursing toddlers. However, a lot more people nursing into toddlerhood than you might know, it's just that we don't talk about it to other people. After my son weaned, I found out that my two downstairs neighbors and three ladies on the next street also nursed for at least 2 years. I believe in self-weaning, a child knows when they are done nursing. For some it's 18 months, for others it's 4 years. For my first son it was 2.5 years. They gradually cut down the amount they nurse until they are done. No crying, no psychological damage from premature forced weaning, no drama, and YES, they do all wean eventually. It's nutritionally beneficial as long as you nurse--you never have to worry about a picky eater, or constipation, or anything nutrition oriented as long as they are getting mother's milk. Baby still gets immunologies and antibodies while nursing, which is great since a child's immune system isn't fully developed until Kindergarten age. My son never had an ear infection, not one. Some studies even show a higher IQ the longer a child is nursed. Any child artificially weaned before the age of 2 is at increased risk of illness (so says The World Health Organization.) YOU get a lower risk of breast, ovarian, uterine, endometrial etc., cancers the longer you nurse. Did you know that breast cancer used to be called "The Nun's Disease" because they were the ones who got it--no babies to nurse. Your risk of rheumatoid arthritis decreases by 50% if you nurse at least 24 months. Your risk of osteoporosis decreases significantly as well. The benefits to baby are outstanding, but let's not leave mother's health out of it either. Don't you think it's funny that nursing is the only biological function that is so tied to the Gregorian calendar? That it's the best, most perfect food for 364 days and then on day 365 it goes rotten and sour? It doesn't hold up to logic. Children all over the world nurse until they are done, which is usually between 18 months to 5 years.
  7. Around 10 months... some women choose to do it longer, but by 10 months, the baby has gotten already so many nutrients from it and it's not so much necessary to do it anymore. Id go with 10 months. =) and yes, 2 or 3 years old...wow, that is insane! I agree with you.
  8. You're just being weird. Health Canada, the WHO, UNICEF, etcetera etcetera etcetera, recommend breastfeeding for a *minimum* of two years.
  9. i think as long as a mother feels it is good for their child to do it is how long they should. it can get to the point where the mother doesn't want to ween the child for whatever reason and that is a different story. it could be that the mother has a problem with letting go. for me 1 year is an ideal age to let go and exclusively give food because by that time they can eat pretty much anything unless the doctor says otherwise. it is pretty much a personal choice and who am i to say what is good for a another mother's kid? it will probably remain a controversial topic though and you should not kick it unless you know what a mom goes through. breast feeding is a wonderful thing and the feeling of bonding with your child on that level and knowing that they are healthy and nourished is because of you can be a hard thing to let go of.
  10. In other countries such as Canada it is recommended to do it until 2 years of age, no that kid was not to old, your just a product of American's ideas that breasts are only for pleasure not nutrition, the benefits of breastfeeding do not stop at 1 year, or 10 months as someone said.
  11. A child needs full-fat milk until at least age 2 for optimal brain development. Therefore any weaning beffore age 2 is premature. Humans are biologically ready to wean between the ages of 2-7 years-old. My DD self-weaned at 40 months and my son is 34 months and still has a nibble a couple times a day. There are all sorts of absurd and arbitrary "reasons" for weanig in our culture. One must look at how humans would have acted with their babies, were we still in the early stages of evolution. Why should speaking or teeth preclude breastfeeding? A talking, teething child doesn't suddenly become a cow and still requires the nutrition of human milk. http://www.kellymom.com/bf/older-baby/index.html http://www.kellymom.com/bf/bfextended/ebf-benefits.html
  12. Between 2 and 3 is a good age it helps us moms get back into shape also
  13. my SIL is Still breastfeeding her daughter she will be 2 in may so she is 19 months. me and my MIL think its definitely time to stop. i will probably stop between 6 months and a year. we'll have to see when the time comes.
  14. You are just being weird. No I'm not a boob nazi, as some people will say, I'm jut educated on the subject. Breastmilk has many nutritional properties that cows milk and formula do not have. The benifit of breastfeeding goes on for as long as you continue to breastfeed. The WHO (world health org) recommends 2+ years of breastfeeding. The benifits of breastmilk do not go away when a child can walk, talk, gets teeth, or anything else. The child you saw was not only getting comfort, he/she was getting valueable antibodies, amino acids and the best milk for humans, human milk. I know it can be strange seeing older babies (2, 3 and 4 year olds) breastfeeding in public but they are the lucky ones. Feel free to check out Kellymom.com and look at the extended breastfeeding link. It gives you all kinds of information on extended breastfeeding and the benifits to your children. Also did you know that kids who breastfeed have stronger immune systems and do better in school? Also you cant tell by looking at a child how old they are. My daughter is 10 months old but looks like a 5 month old. My cousins child is 2 and looks like she is 3.
  15. Obviously the benefits of breastfeeding for both child and mother are wonderful, but as someone else already mentioned, breastfeeding beyond a certain age is simply not widely accepted in most cultures. I personally think that feeding directly from the breast is probably fine for about the first year or less, then maybe its more appropriate to pump the milk and have the baby feed from the bottle, combined with starting to eat solid foods. Why do they have to be feeding directly from the breast to be getting breastmilk? I agree with the person who said that if they're old enough to say "boobies" they shouldn't be breastfeeding! LOL.
  16. That always weirds me out too. 12 months is the perfect age since they can start drinking cows milk at that age. Plus they're eating so much solid food that they dont need the calories.
  17. Everyone has different views on it. Some think when they get teeth you should stop and some think you should just keep going until the child stops even if that means at 2, 3, or even 4 years old. They also keep doing it for nutritional values or they just don't want to give up that bonding experience. For me I wanted to breastfeed until my daughter was a year old, but when she started standing in my lap to drink at 9 months I felt like that was old enough for me so I slowly switched her to formula and at 12 months switched her to whole milk in a cup. She's a happy and healthy 15 month old now.
  18. yup, you're being weird. breast feeding is completely natural, and if you knew anything about attachment parenting you would realize that not everyone embraces what most dr's or pediatricians recommend as being 'best for baby' -
  19. AMERICAN Academy of Family Physicians: http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/policy/policies/b/breastfeedingpositionpaper.html "If the child is younger than two years of age, the child is at increased risk of illness if weaned." AMERICAN Academy of Pediatricians http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;115/2/496 Increased duration of breastfeeding confers significant health and developmental benefits for the child and the mother, especially in delaying return of fertility (thereby promoting optimal intervals between births). There is no upper limit to the duration of breastfeeding and no evidence of psychologic or developmental harm from breastfeeding into the third year of life or longer http://www.kellymom.com/bf/bfextended/ebf-benefits.html # Nursing toddlers benefit NUTRITIONALLY # Nursing toddlers are SICK LESS OFTEN # Nursing toddlers have FEWER ALLERGIES # Nursing toddlers are SMART # Nursing toddlers are WELL ADJUSTED SOCIALLY # Nursing a toddler is NORMAL # MOTHERS also benefit from nursing past infancy (more on each at link) http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html In societies where children are allowed to nurse "as long as they want" they usually self-wean, with no arguments or emotional trauma, between 3 and 4 years of age. This interest also stemmed from the realization that other animals have "natural" ages of weaning, around 8 weeks for dogs, 8-12 months for horses, etc. Presumably these animals don't have cultural beliefs about when it would be appropriate. Some of the results are as follows: 1. In a group of 21 species of non-human primates (monkeys and apes) studied by Holly Smith, she found that the offspring were weaned at the same time they were getting their first permanent molars. In humans, that would be: 5.5-6.0 years. 2. It has been common for pediatricians to claim that length of gestation is approximately equal to length of nursing in many species, suggesting a weaning age of 9 months for humans. However, this relationship turns out to be affected by how large the adult animals are -- the larger the adults, the longer the length of breastfeeding relative to gestation. For chimpanzees and gorillas, the two primates closest in size to humans and also the most closely genetically related, the relationship is 6 to 1. That is to say, they nurse their offspring for SIX times the length of gestation (actually 6.1 for chimps and 6.4 for gorillas, with humans mid-way in size between these two). In humans, that would be: 4.5 years of nursing (six times the 9 months of gestation). 3. It has been common for pediatricians to claim that most mammals wean their offspring when they have tripled their birth weight, suggesting a weaning age of 1 year in humans. Again though, this is affected by body weight, with larger mammals nursing their offspring until they have quadrupled their birth weight. In humans, quadrupling of birth weight occurs between 2.5 and 3.5 years, usually. 4. One study of primates showed that the offspring were weaned when they had reached about 1/3 their adult weight. This happens in humans at about 5-7 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). 6. Studies have shown that a child's immune system doesn't completely mature until about 6 years of age, and it is well established that breast milk helps develop the immune system and augment it with maternal antibodies as long as breast milk is produced (up to two years, no studies have been done on breast milk composition after two years post partum). 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. In terms of the benefits of extended breastfeeding, there have been a number of studies comparing breastfed and bottlefed babies in terms of the frequency of various diseases, and also IQ achievement. In every case, the breastfed babies had lower risk of disease and higher IQs than the bottle-fed babies. In those studies that divided breastfed babies into categories based on length of breastfeeding, the babies breastfed the longest did better in terms of both lower disease and higher IQ. In other words, if the categories were 0-6 months of breastfeeding, 6-12 months, 12-18 months and 18-24+ months, then the 18-24+ month babies did the best, and the 12-18 month babies did the next best, and the 6-12 months babies did the next best, and the 0-6 months babies did the worst of the breastfed groups, but still much better than the bottlefeeding group. This has been shown for gastrointestinal illness, upper respiratory illness, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, heart disease, and on and on and on. Likewise, the babies nursed the longest scored the highest on the IQ tests. One important point to notice is that none of these studies looked at children who had nursed longer than 2 years. Anyone 18-24 month or longer was lumped into big category. Presumably, the benefits continue to accrue, as your body doesn't *know* that the baby has bad a birth day and suddenly start producing nutritionally and immunologically worthless milk. However, no one has yet proved, either way, that the benefits of breastfeeding either continue or stop at two years of age, because the appropriate studies have not been done. The trend during the first two years is clearly for continuing benefits the longer you nurse. Clearly the phenomenon of dimishing returns is at work here -- the first six months of breastfeeding are clearly much more important in terms of the baby's nutrition and immunological development than the six months from 3.5 to 4.0 years. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't continue to provide breast milk if your baby wants and you don't mind. It would be like saying, "Well Mabel, we don't get very much income from that oil well anymore. Used to get $56 a month in royalties, now we're lucky if we get $25 a year. Guess we should tell that oil company just to keep their durn money." And Mabel says, in return "Good grief, Clyde, don't be ridiculous. That check still buys $25 worth of food. Where has your mind gone to now?" Clearly, babies born in the U.S. don't have to contend with all the diseases and parasites and contaminated water that babies in Third World countries do. We have more supplementary foods that we can generally trust to be safe and clean. We can get our children immunized, and get them antibiotics for infections when necessary. The fact that we *can* does not mean that breastfeeding is unimportant. Breastfed babies still have the "edge" over bottlefed babies, even in a squeaky clean environment with wonderful medical care. They get sick less often, they are smarter, they are happier. Another important consideration for the older child is that they are able to maintain their emotional attachment to a person, rather than being forced to switch to an inanimate object such as a teddy bear or blanket. I think this sets the stage for a life of people-orientation, rather than materialism, and I think that is a good thing. I also can't imagine living through the toddler years without that close loving connection to a child going through enormous changes, some of which are very frustrating to the child. I could go on forever, but will stop here.
  20. The BEST age to stop nursing is when the nursling has decided that they are done. Be that 18 months or 4 years old, they will let you know. I am currently still nursing my 1 year old, and have no plans of stopping until he weans himself. People will say that when they get teeth, or can ask for it they are too old. My son got his first tooth at 6 months, and was "asking for it"(first word was bub, which meant boob) at 7 months. Even though he was WELL below the 2 years that is the recommended weaning age, going by those excuses I should have put him on an inferior BM substitute at that point. Sorry, but my kids can also ask for hugs, sippy cups, food....does that mean that I should cut them off from those too?
  21. No, that child was not too old. The AAP recommends at least 1 year, the WHO at least 2, and both agree that continuing breastfeeding for 3 years and beyond is healthy and natural. When should they stop? Whenever mother and child no longer wish to continue. Putting an age will be unfair as different children will reach that limit at different times.
  22. I don't think your crazy... but then again I think any women with the "balls" to pull her tit out in public and start feeding must have a few screws loose to begin with. I think when they start walking it is time to find a different method of providing your child with food. hehe good question