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Hi Tatjana,

What a fascinating topic. It used to be one of my favorites. Breastfeeding makes the first half year so easy. You don’t have to prepare any food. It’s all there. However, I wonder about your statement to breastfeed as long as the child wants. Thank you for sharing the article on breastfeeding.

Hi Nellie, thank you for your state/agreement and for linking the quoted article! When my child was 9 months old my environment (friends, child-doctor, family) put pressure on me to add food, so I prepared complicated healthy food … Although my son didn´t want it, I tried to convice him to eat that :) Now I would just wait till the child shows interest in eating food itself! This way I also found in the breastfeeding-literature. Did your child do so, when it was 6 months old? I´m curious to hear. Well, the child signalizes very natural and clear, when s/he wants to drink, wants your breast. So why should I `tell´ him one day that this is from now on false? This was my question. My answer was, of course I would never reject him, so let´s wait and see (and drink a cup of tea :))

Hi all, I am still breastfeeding at 14 months. He eats solid food too, but I still breast feed him whenever he asks for it. We are very careful not to pressure him too much to eat solid foods. He eats what he wants and as long as we offer a variety he seems to get a good balance. We started at around 7 months with some cereal and sweet potato.

Hi Jen, you express excactely the way I would recommend every mother/family. Thank you. How are the reactions of your environment? How is long-term-breastfeeding looked in your country? In Germany breastfeeding is very much promoted for the first three months. Longer times, even years is still unusual and looked at peculiar. Was it your inner voice plus information besides the usual advice, that led you to your practice? Like this it was with me.

There is a new book (German title: “Die Denker des Dschungels. Der Orangutan Report”) of Schuster, Smits, Ullal (2008), translated “Philosophers of the dschungle. The Orangutan Report”, with interesting information from our closest relatives about our topic: The little Orangutan is always in contact with his mother since it is about 7 years old, about 5 years it is breastfed, but starts trying fruit and leaves during its first year. The mortality of orangutan-children is very low. I used to find pictures like this of an orangutan female breastfeeding her (kindergarden-)child encouraging to find a way for my inner voice (“Let your child drink, whenever it wants (and you´re available)”) through the dschungle of modern expectations!

Here is an article on breastfeeding and weaning

You may wish to collaborate with others on the value of breastfeeding. Here is a video on the subject: http://wikieducator.org/Breast_feeding_and_weaning

Thank you Nellie!

Here is the german website for long-term-breastfeeding (under construction): http://www.langzeitstillen.de/

By the way, Nellie, how do you manage to make the hyperlinks here, mine don´t work.