breastfeeding & weaning

Quentin has started walking!  Everyday he becomes more and more confident and walks more and more.  He's at about 50% crawling, 50% walking now.  My parents are in town and my mom commented how stable he is for just starting out. I can't really compare him to other kids since I only have the one.  I think he was just waiting until he felt completely confident.

He has been eating a lot better lately.  He even ate some tilapia a couple times, but it had to be off of other people's plates for some reason.  I also started feeding him baby food again, which he gladly eats.  He likes it and it's healthy for him so I see no reason to force him to eat other food.  If he's 14 and still wants to eat baby food I guess that will be ok (he definitely wouldn't be overweight), but my guess is that he probably will give in to peer pressure before that happens.

Last week he didn't want to take any morning naps, but this week he's been much more interested, which is nice.  He has been waking up at 6:00 AM and the last two days when I have breastfed him and put him back to sleep he actually slept until 7:00 AM, which is much more conducive to my sleep schedule.  Hopefully this leads to him just sleeping until 7:00 AM.  At least he hasn't been waking up in the middle of the night this week.

I didn't read the article, but I did see the controversial cover of Time Magazine that shows a woman nursing her toddler. This article spured a lot of debate on how long is acceptible to breastfeed your child and also led to an article called "Celebrities Who Breastfed Toddlers (but not on the cover of TIME)" by By Amber McCann, IBCLC.  Reading the quotes in there by people who I think are cool like Gwen Stefani and Erykah Badu saying they breastfed their babies well into their second year, it makes me feel differently about how long is acceptable to nurse.  I have felt a little societial pressure to wean Quentin since he turned one year old.

I borrowed a book on my Kindle from the library called "The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning" by Kathleen Huggins, R.N., M.S. and Linda Ziedrich.  I have read the first chapter which is all about the history and benefits of breastfeeding.  The history part made me feel a little sick, people starving their babies and feeding them food with little to no nutritional value (thank heavens for modern day baby formula).  I knew nursing was a good thing to do, but I didn't realize just how good breastfeeding is for babies and their moms.  

Babies who are formula fed are more susceptible to all sorts of infections (ear, respiratory, diarrheal, urinary track, meningitis) and are ten times as likely to be hospitalized for a serious infection than a breastfed baby.  They are more likely to be overweight and get Type 1 diabetes, childhood leukemia, lymphoma, pyloric stenosis, celiac diseas, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn's disease. Then there's the risk of bacterial infections caused by non sterile ingredients used in the formula.  Mom's who breastfeed for two years are 50% less likely to get breast cancer and it also helps protect against ovarian cancer and osteoporosis.

I also didn't know that the World Health Organization recommends, "Exclusive breastfeeding...up to 6 months of age, with continued breastfeeding along with appropriate complementary foods up to two years of age or beyond."  I had only heard that you should breastfeed for a year so this has also helped changed my perspective on breastfeeding and weaning.

There were two moms at the church playgroup I attended in Oklahoma City and both had babies over a year old who were breastfed.  The one mom said that she would nurse her baby as long as she wanted until she was two.  I'm starting to think that maybe I don't have to wean Quentin just because he's over one year old and I can quit feeling guilty that I haven't done it yet.  Not to say that I haven't been thinking about it or that I'll wait another six months, but that I can do this on my own time and it's not a big deal if I don't do it right now, in fact it's good for him to nurse.

I'm thinking that people get the wrong idea about me because I nurse my baby past his first birthday, wear him around in a baby carrier, shop at natural food stores (for gluten-free food), and drive a Prius  :)