Breastfeeding Toddlers Part 4

Lilli Docherty lives on the Dorset coast with her husband and their four children. Their eldest child, Dakota, seven, chose to self wean on her sixth birthday, her brother Olsson, five, continues to nurse alongside his twin brothers Bowie & Camden, who are three and a half. For over two years Lilli nursed all four of them and found very few people in a similar position, so set up @onejourneyparenting on Instagram to share this experience with others.

“For me, natural term weaning was less something I set out to do and more just became what we were doing. It works. Breastfeeding continues to heal and solve both physical and emotional issues. While boundaries have been added along the way, breastfeeding has been my go-to tool with parenting. I have envied my husband when I’m needed so regularly, but equally felt privileged to have this method. We’ve been fortunate to only require a trip to the doctors for bumps and cuts but I do believe in part this is due to the nutritional and medicinal value of breast milk. I wonder what the next chapter of parenting will look like. My eldest stopped nursing at six years old. We have made sure to continue sharing the closeness and time together. The thought of bedtime routines and mornings not including nursing time seems baffling though. Natural term weaning isn’t always understood; I myself, pre-parenting, didn’t think walking babies needed to be breastfed. However, I’ve gained knowledge and have been empowered to continue with this asset to our whole family’s health while thankful for the pauses and moments it has provided us with.

Established benefits of breastfeeding
UNICEF sets out the ways in which the longer a baby is breastfed the greater the health benefits for both mother and child. It takes between two and six years for a child’s immune system to fully mature. Human milk continues to complement and boost the immune system for as long as it is offered.

Natural duration of breastfeeding
Anthropologist Kathy Dettwyler’s research suggests that the normal and natural duration of breastfeeding for modern humans falls between 2.5 years at a minimum and about 7 years at a maximum. Until around the last 100 years natural term breastfeeding was a cultural norm. Dettwyler also says “Many primates wean their offspring when they are erupting their first permanent molars. This occurs around five-and-a-half to six years in modern humans around the same time as achievement of adult immune competence suggesting that throughout our recent evolutionary past the active immunities provided by breastmilk were normally available to the child until about this age.”

VISIT annowenfoto.com
READ Breastfeeding Made Simple - Seven Natural Laws for Nursing Mothers
EXPLORE Resources for Natural term Breastfeeding abm.me.uk