Happy Monday folks! This weekend we were kept busy with a happy visit with both of our mothers, a date, and a visit to our local farm. I just wanted to remind everyone that I am still running the Duraban Green Cleaning Giveaway this week and the winner will be announced on Friday. Just leave a comment on the post and enter for your chance to win, clean green and manage the spread of cold and flu viruses this winter.
On another note, I am rereading Norma Jane Bumgarner’s Mothering Your Nursing Toddler, a wonderfully helpful book for mothers who practice extended nursing, pregnant mothers who breastfeed, and mothers who are tandem nursing. In addition to benefiting from Bumgarner’s helpful tips and advice on how nursing can help comfort a teething and tantruming toddler, I am also reminded of why I chose to nurse my daughter beyond her first year of life:
1. Nursing helps children feel good and happy. What parent doesn’t want their child to feel good, especially if a child is tantrum prone or easily frustrated during the terrible/terrific twos?
2. Nursing establishes intimacy between mom and child. No one but mom and baby understand the special one on one time had during nursing, nor the play, the laughter, and well, the naps had too.
3. Nursing is the easiest way to comfort a child. Our children are busy growing, encountering new experiences, overcoming their fears, getting hurt, and winding up plumb tired during this stage of the game. Sometimes I wonder what I would do to ease my daughter’s discomfort were I not nursing her.
4. Breastfeeding is a natural analgesic for the pains of teething (why rely on children’s aspirin, teehters, etc. when mother nature gives mom the tools she needs to ease her child’s pain?).
5. Nursing is a natural sleep inducer. Need I say more? After a long day with a baby on wheels, a breastfeeding mother can be rewarded by helping her little one drift off to sleep.
6. Nursing can help our little ones overcome illnesses (breastmilk helps build our nursing toddler’s immune system).
7. Breastfeeding may help allergy prone children.
8. Breastfeeding minimizes skin disorders in nursing children.
9. Nursing is one way to participate in natural family planning.
10. Nursing enhances mothering and allows a tired mother to rest and have patience and compassion for her child.
Bumgarner’s Mothering Your Nursing Toddler includes many, many more chapters (and reasons) about the benefits of nursing a toddler and older child. As a nursing mamma for amost 2 years now, I have to say that most everything that Bumgarner lists as the benefits of nursing (for mother, child, and family too) resonates with what I value most as a mother.
What is your primary reason for nursing your toddler? Why did you choose to continue nursing your baby beyond the first year of life? Do you consider breastfeeding your child to be a rewarding part of mothering? What do you love about nursing your child?
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{ 2 comments }
Jessica,
I nursed all three of my children well into toddlerhood–and beyond–for all the reasons you mention, and more! Mostly, because it just felt right. I never started out thinking that I would nurse for “x” number of years, but it just evolved, as time went on. There is definitely NO better way to bond with your child and to ensure that your child gets the nutrition that is BEST for him/her and that you BOTH get sleep. It soon became apparent that it is also the EASIEST way to comfort your child, as well as the easiest, most convenient, and most economical way to provide for middle-of-the-night feedings, especially on cold, frosty nights! We had a “family bed” before it was fashionable and we did what just felt right. Both my husband and I were raised on dairy farms and we knew the reason cows gave milk is for their babies!
If I had it to do all over again, I would do it the same–and would cherish every nursing moment! My youngest is now 19 years old and is a strapping 6′5″ tall. I barely stretch to 5 ft. and my husband often jokes that Nathaniel’s height and health comes from YEARS of nursing and rich mother’s milk.
Please continue to spread the word – - breast milk is best! I recently gave my best friend’s daughter the cutest T-shirt at her recent baby shower that says: “I make milk. . .What’s YOUR super power?”
Breastfeeding will NEVER go out of style!
Thank you Ruth for sharing your breastfeeding experiences. Also, it makes me smile to know that your husband was so supportive of breastfeeding. I love the idea of sporting a tee that says, “I make milk. . .What’s YOUR super power?”
I truly hope that other mothers will feel the same way that you did when your children were nurslings. I certainly agree with you, and I have to admit that prior to have my own baby I was completely oblivious to how breastfeeding is not only a nutritious way to feed our children but is a wonderful way to feed with love and respect and nurtures a trusting bond.
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