Listeners Q&A

In honour of this being officially my 100th episode, I’m answering listeners’ questions this week. We cover natural term breastfeeding, weaning older children, dealing with conflict with family and a response to a request to share my own breastfeeding story.

If you’d like to read the questions, you’ll find each one in Bold in the transcript for this episode.

My new picture book on how breastfeeding journeys end, The Story of Jessie’s Milkies, is available from Amazon here -  The Story of Jessie's Milkies. In the UK, you can also buy it from The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London. Other book shops and libraries can source a copy from Ingram Spark publishing.

You can also get 10% off my books on supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding at the Jessica Kingsley press website, that's uk.jkp.com using the code MMPE10 at checkout.

Follow me on Instagram  @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com 

This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

Transcript

This transcript is AI generated. Questions appear in Bold.

[00:00:00] Emma Pickett: I am Emma Pickett, and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself makes milk. That was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children, and now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end, and I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end too.

Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk, and of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk. Hello. Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode.

As you'll have seen from the title, it's Just Little Old Me. Today we're going to be answering some questions that people have sent into me because of the nature of my work. A lot of them are about natural term breastfeeding and breastfeeding older children, and we're doing that in honor of this being my official 100th episode.

So I've, we've had some little trailers and bits and bobs, but this is the official 100th issued episode, and I just want to say thank you to everyone who stuck with me. Thank you so much for the lovely feedback. And I, I'm so grateful that some of these episodes have really connected with people. I know some of them are a little bit niche.

Um, I'm not doing this to make my fortune. Um, I'm creating an episode that may be something you'd share with a family or share with a friend who's going through a particular issue. And the idea of the podcast is really just so people don't feel as alone, because sometimes that breastfeeding journey can be quite lonely and isolating.

And I want there to be a resource that helps people to feel connected to a community and connected to others. So I ask people to send me their questions, and some of them were tandem feeding focused, and I'll answer a couple of those, but I've also put some of those tandem feeding questions into an episode that's gonna happen in a couple of weeks time.

I'm gonna be talking to Nicola, who's an infant feeding coach in Jersey, and we're gonna be talking about your tandem feeding issues. So most of the questions today are about natural term breastfeeding and feeding toddlers. And some of the questions are quite long, but I'm gonna read them in their entirety because people are sort of sharing their stories and sharing where they are in their lives.

And that does mean that the show notes won't really be able to have the questions in full. But I hope you will find something that is valuable to you. 

So let's start with question number one. Question number one says, what are the typical signs of a toddler naturally winding down breastfeeding? 

Now, I wish I could answer this by saying, oh yeah, no problem.

Look out for A, B, C, D, E, F, G. But it's that word typical and the word toddler coming together in a sentence, which is a bit of a problem because there is such a massive range of normal when it comes to that winding down process. So let me describe a couple of toddlers, for example, here's one toddler. They haven't breastfed in the day for ages.

They only breastfeed at bedtime and in the morning. And those feeds have been getting gradually shorter and shorter. They may not ask for them. They may only have the feed when it's part of an expected routine. They're not particularly fussed when somebody else is doing bedtime. And in the morning, perhaps one morning, they're just really keen to dash downstairs because their favorite waffles are in the cupboard and they don't even mind that they haven't had that morning breastfeed.

So that particular toddler, very gradually breastfeeding, became something that didn't fill their emotion cup. It wasn't something they needed to feel connected or regulated. Other things started to fill that space for them. And the urge, the little inner voice that requested a breastfeed mattered less and less.

It mattered less and less with their sleeping pattern. It was just something that they gradually disconnected from slowly, slowly, slowly. Um, you might have another toddler who feeds quite a lot in the day when you're with them, but on nursery days. It doesn't seem particularly bothered about the fact they're not breastfeeding during the day.

Really doesn't mind and used to desperately want that post nursery feed would leap on you when you came through the door and slowly got more interested in playing with toys. There was a delay before a feed happened. You might even ask them if they to breastfeed sometimes, which is something you never felt you needed to do before.

And essentially breastfeeding isn't in the front of their minds anymore. It's just something that they might want sometimes if they've fallen over or if they're feeling really emotional or really wobbly in a social situation. But gradually, gradually it fills up less of their emotion cup and it's something they need less and less.

Um, so what are the typical signs that they're not feeding as much? They're not asking as much. When feeds do happen, they're very brief and they total off and do something else, and there isn't necessarily one way it happens for everybody. If you are hoping to see typical signs because you think that's gonna be a chance to kind of leap on that and maybe trigger some sort of parent led weaning journey, that's a little bit easier.

I'd also say that unfortunately, toddlers can go through stages. So you might have a toddler that seems to lose interest and then suddenly gets more interested in that again when they're going through a transition or something emotionals happening for them, or there's a change in their life. So you can't necessarily rely on one particular phase of breastfeeding behavior as being indicative of a, of an overall long-term arc.

So first question, essentially, I can't answer it, that's perhaps not the best question to start with, but I'm gonna be completely honest with you, which is was what, what I always try to do. If you are asking this question because you are hoping that your child is ending breastfeeding or you want them to end breastfeeding, or you are hoping that self weaning is happening, take a step back from that.

Think about where your motivations are coming from. Do you actually want to breastfeeding? And if so, get support for that. Think about that. Own that and, and you know, take that with both hands and, and move forward with that if that's what you want to do. 

Next question says, I would love some tips on dealing with big emotions on both sides when ending breastfeeding. My son is nearing two years old and we both rely a lot on breastfeeding for managing big emotions and helping calm tantrums. 

So I'd wonder whether, whether you are ending breastfeeding, it doesn't sound as though you are, it sounds as though at the moment breastfeeding is really working for both of you.

It's really filling a hole, it's really filling a gap. It's helping with those difficult dysregulated totally years. And that is something to really celebrate. And I think sometimes when people are in this situation, they can get a little bit scared because they suddenly think, gosh, am I relying on breastfeeding too much?

Is this too much of a crutch? Should it be like this? And I think that sometimes comes from a kind of prejudice against natural term breastfeeding, which we all absorb as part of living in this society. I don't know if you need tips on dealing with big emotions, because I think you are dealing with big emotions in the way that you are.

I think you have a strategy that works super well. Uh, as your breastfeeding patterns gradually change, other things will start to fill that gap. So as children get older, they're going to get better at regulating their feelings. They're going to get better at finding other strategies. Crucially, you're gonna be able to talk to them.

You're gonna be able to say things like, well, actually, mommy's boobies are a bit tired right now. What can we do instead? You know, should we have a cuddle? Should we have a dance? Should we go and snuggle in our little den and, and talk about something? As they get older and their communications and skills improve, that gap is naturally going to be filled.

So you don't necessarily have to consciously sit down with a notebook and think, what do I have to do to solve this problem? Because A, you don't necessarily have a problem. You're using breastfeeding as it's meant to be used, but also B, this thing happens organically. It happens gradually. It happens slowly.

And for example, families that self wean, it's not like someone's gotta sit down and with their, with their partner or their best friend and go, right, okay, let's open a Microsoft Word file here. I'm gonna have to make a list of things that will replace breastfeeding. It doesn't happen that consciously. It happens very gently and organically.

I would say if you know that you are frightened of ending breastfeeding and that feels particularly scary for you, it is worth doing a little bit of reflecting on that. So if it may be, for example, that you're somebody, and I was just talking about this the other day, who had a difficult parenting experience yourself, you might have even had some childhood traumas.

You might be somebody who I call a cycle breaker. So you have parented in a different way from the way that you were parented. You've maybe really leaned into natural term breastfeeding and co-sleeping and responsive parenting, and that's really helped you to heal some of the wounds from your own childhood.

You feel as though you're giving your child a very different start in life from the start in life that you had. First of all, well done. That is fantastic that you've done that, and that's something to be incredibly proud of. But the next stage can feel a bit scary, um, and it can feel a bit frightening to think, well, hang on, I've always been able to calm my child.

I've always been able to regulate them. Have I got those skills when breastfeeding ends? What's going to happen when breastfeeding ends? And that can feel a bit frightening. So acknowledge that and not acknowledge that's where you're coming from. If that is your history and that is your past, and it might be worth doing a parenting course, it might be worth talking to a therapist.

It might be worth talking to a parenting coach. You'll know I've talked to Shelly Clark on episodes in the past. Learn about attachment play. That's my big tip. If you're scared about breastfeeding ending. Learn about attachment play. What does it mean? What does it look like? How can we use play to support our children emotionally?

Because that's often gonna be the thing that really fills the gap, um, when breastfeeding ends. 

Okay. Next question says, would love to learn about the benefits of natural term weaning combined with dry nursing. So, for example, my 4-year-old still wants a bedtime feed, but 90% of the time it seems like he's not had anything and he even reports back that I was empty.

It feels like the natural wind down will never happen, but would be great to know the upside of continuing versus initiating weaning. 

So reading your question, it doesn't sound as though you mind this, it doesn't sound as though you're in any discomfort or any pain or, or you're struggling with the fact that he's mostly dry nursing, which is good to hear.

What are the benefits of continuing Well on a physical level when a child is suckling, that's gonna be helping. Palate development, jaw development. Um, we know that breastfeeding is going to reduce the need for, for braces and orthodontistry, and there's no reason to feel that dry nursing is, is going to be any less of an impact on that.

Um, but really we're talking about an emotional need, aren't we? He perceives that that dry nursing is helping him to regulate his emotions. It's helping him to feel supported. He's making a request of you and you are able to meet that request with no resistance, with complete love, with complete giving of yourself in that moment.

And that is really special, you know, so he's saying, I would love this from you. And you are saying, yes, I'm here. I'm up for that. I can help support you in that. I promise it will wind down one day. I absolutely promise it will, because there has never been a reported case of somebody not eventually self weaning.

Everybody will eventually self wean at some point. If you start to feel as though it's a problem and you don't want to continue the bedtime feed, you will have really authentic and honest conversations with him. You will talk about how you're feeling. You will talk about how your body's ready to stop.

You will talk about how you need to let your body have a rest, and you will hold space for his feelings. You will validate that sense of loss for him. You will say to him, I know it's really hard my love. I'm here to help you. What else might be a good idea? What else can we do to help you at bedtime? And you will be there to support him when that time comes.

But at the moment, no reason to stop if it's working for both of you, and what are the benefits that his emotional needs are being met? Those are the benefits. 

Okay. Next one's quite a big one. Okay, ready for this question? Here we go. I'm curious if you could chat about the psychological benefits of breastfeeding long term.

It's been a point of tension with my other half who's feeling like breastfeeding. My two and a half year old has an effect on his relationship with her, for example. She's always been sensitive and highly attached to me, and he worries that she uses breastfeeding as a way to suppress emotions and that it puts a barrier between himself and her.

He believes ending breastfeeding will end this issue. I don't agree with this, but I do understand from an aware parenting perspective and using control patterns, et cetera, he's on board with long-term breastfeeding, but is desperate for more information as to whether this is the issue and whether it will create long-term issues for her mentally.

Again, I don't agree with this perspective, but thought it would help him with another perspective. 

Okay. You may not want him to listen to my answer to this because I'm gonna be talking to you. I'm not gonna be talking to him. You say that he's supportive of long-term breastfeeding, um, and he's on board with that.

I would question your description of him being board with long-term breastfeeding. If he has a perception that breastfeeding is damaging and it should end if he believes that breastfeeding is impacting his relationship with her negatively, that's what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if he believes that that's the barrier to his relationship with her, then he has created that barrier in his mind.

I work with hundreds of families every year. I've worked with families who are natural term breastfeeding for 15 years. I absolutely promise that there are families out there who are natural term breastfeeding. Well beyond the point you are with beautiful, healthy, connected relationships between the dad or the non breastfeeding parent and the child.

If you believe it's a barrier, it becomes a barrier. If you believe that breastfeeding is harmful, you will go out of your way to interpret situations and and see that in places where it doesn't exist. If you're asking me for evidence, then you're asking me to list research studies. I would want to reverse that and I would say, okay, well I'm guessing he's a bloke with a laptop.

Why doesn't he go and do some research as well? What research studies exist out there to show the harm of continuing to breastfeed? Because actually in science, that's what we want to be doing. We want to be looking to prove his hypothesis. We don't want to be going out there to, to try and find evidence of a positive that actually is a, is a na is a biological norm.

It's gonna be very difficult to find evidence around a biological norm. Why is his anti natural term breastfeeding the status quo that you have to argue against? It is difficult to find research about breastfeeding beyond two years. It's difficult for lots of different reasons. One reason is that people don't fund it.

You're not going to get companies interested. You're not even gonna get health systems interested. Large academic institutions. You know, the emphasis is on establishing new breastfeeding families and establishing breastfeeding beyond the first, you know, few months. And there isn't necessarily an incentive to be doing research beyond two years beyond three years.

It's also difficult because it's difficult to get a decent sample size because there are not many people who do natural term breastfeeding. It can be really difficult to engage with them. Plus sometimes it's difficult to engage with them because there is a natural stigma around natural term breastfeeding and not everybody is open with their families that they are natural term breastfeeding.

So we've got lots of reasons why it's difficult for researchers to get research off the ground or get funding for research or find enough of a sample size. And when you do get research for natural term breastfeeding, it tends to be very small cohorts, groups, teeny weeny, little qualitative studies where we're looking at small groups of people reporting their personal experiences.

And if you're looking for something about psychological benefits. You can't just do it in a qualitative dinky winky study, you'd have to do it on a really big population based study to have a large enough sample to be able to rule out all the variables. So I don't want to get too sciencey, but in a study where we need to look at complex variables, and obviously when a child is six and has psychological problems, there are so many factors that might come into that.

Lots and lots of factors around parenting styles, family situations, loads of loads of issues. So to be able to rule out variables, you need a massive population of people so you can do a decent comparison. So we don't get those massive populations of people breastfeeding older children, and it's very difficult therefore to do studies that look at things like physical and psychological benefits beyond a certain age, I would say you can have a look at a couple of studies.

So we've got Delgado and Etal from 2017 based in Brazil. Looking at breastfeeding beyond two years, no evidence of any psychiatric disorders. Not the most positive language, but that's what that study looked like, looked at. There was no increased risk of psychiatric disorders when children breastfed.

Beyond two years, we've got audial, which looked at breastfeeding beyond six months and found positive mental health outcomes into adolescence. So, audial again, six, you might think, well, six months, that's nothing. I'm talking about two years. But you know, that's the issue. When we, when we are looking at breastfeeding for longer term, it does tend to be six months that we look at, because you get those larger groups of people breastfeeding beyond six months.

So Audial is a nice one because Audial talks about mental health outcomes, which is, you know, obviously really valuable and something we're all talking about more these days. Another Brazilian study, um, led by Christian Loret de molar from 2016, breastfeeding beyond those first few months, reduces odds of more severe depressive symptoms, um, later in life.

You know, I don't want you to go back to your husband and say, oh yeah, here are two studies from Brazil. Let's look at Arieta. Because I wouldn't be surprised if he says, oh, well that's only six months plus, or, that's not enough of a study. Or, these studies were in Brazil. I suspect you may not find enough research that keeps him happy.

And I think really we need to ask him to go back to looking inside himself and doing some personal reflections and thinking about where the barriers are coming for from him mentally. Because actually, if you were to wean yourself and your daughter when you don't want to, and it's really clear, you don't want to, that's going to be where the harm comes if you do, if you wean against your will and and push your child through parent-led weaning when you don't want to wean either.

I would be very concerned about your mental health. I'd be concerned about the impact of weaning blues on you. Your child is gonna be confused because you'll have been taking them through that process of loss and you won't necessarily have the capacity to, to hold that space for them because you are gonna be struggling with your own emotions as well.

Is she suppressing her emotions by breastfeeding? Again, very emotive language. She's two and a half for goodness sake. Two and a half year olds aren't meant to be able to self-regulate. They're not, we're not expecting them to be able to manage their emotions and control their emotions. They do get dysregulated and, and in in a difficult space.

Let's just, for a moment, remove the word breastfeeding and put the word cuddling in. If she came up to you several times a day and asked for a cuddle, if she wanted to cuddle before bed, if she wanted to cuddle in the morning, would he think that was a problem? Would he say that that's suppressing her emotions and he'd like you to reduce the cuddling, please?

Because actually breastfeeding is, is just a form of cuddling on one level. So why would we take that away from her? Unless we really, really had hard, solid evidence that there was a good reason to do that. And really in this case, it would be if you didn't want to breastfeed, that would be the bit that mattered.

His perception that it's a barrier is the problem here. It's not based on science. It's based on his personal feelings around how his relationship is developing with his daughter. And I'm gonna slightly be a bit softer here and say, let's have some empathy for that. He's obviously really struggling. He's obviously feeling diff, you know, difficulties around how he's developing his relationship with your daughter.

That's not unnatural. That's not abnormal. Lots of people go through that phase. Even if they're the breastfeeding parent, they go through that phase. So we just want to support him to understand how else he can connect with your daughter. I mentioned attachment play in one of my other answers. It's gonna come down to attachment play.

It's not gonna come down to you taking away your breastfeeding. In order to uplift what he does as a parent, it's gonna be about him taking some responsibility here to change how he relates to your daughter and how he validates her feelings and supports her. I would signpost you to some episodes I did with Scott Mayo talking about dads and breastfeeding.

There are a couple of episodes, um, from a couple of months back. Scott has a fantastic perspective on natural term breastfeeding has lots of kids and, and grandkid and, and you know, and obviously has incredibly healthy relationships with those, with those kids. And I think his perspective on dads and, and natural term breastfeeding is really helpful.

And that's in the second of those two episodes. I've mentioned this, I've used this example before, but I'm gonna say it again. Let's imagine he loved football. You had a kid who was so into football, they loved football, they went out every morning on the weekends, they went to see matches together. They really bonded over football.

They did football after school and after nursery. And you were starting to feel a bit left out. On no planet. Would it be okay for you to say to your partner, actually, do you mind not playing football because I'm just feeling a bit left out and I'm feeling like when you two play football, I can't really connect with our child.

And I would like you to stop playing football. Please can we just entirely ball's out the house. We're not gonna watch until anymore end of football. People would think you were literally insane and no one would expect you to, to come from a to to do that in a reasonable world. So why is it okay for him to ask you to remove breastfeeding from your lives and take breastfeeding outta the equation entirely to improve his ability to connect with your child?

Um, I haven't got an enormous amount of sympathy here, but I'm trying my best to have some empathy. The harm would come from you weaning against your will. The loss for her. What that would mean, um, would potentially be considerable. Um, but the short answer is there are no studies that show any negative psychological benefits of natural term breastfeeding.

There are only studies that show positive psychological benefits. Um, I haven't even mentioned the study from the Philippines that talks about improved psychosocial skills. There is no reason why breastfeeding should end for your child's psychological welfare and the opposite is the case. Okay, deep breaths, right.

Next question. Please could you consider speaking on how to end breastfeeding lovingly and as gentle as possible even if it has to be done quite quickly and suddenly, I may have to be starting a medication soon, which isn't compatible with breastfeeding and neither I nor my 18 month old feel ready to stop. I dunno what to do. 

Okay, I'm so sorry that you're in this situation. I really, really am sorry. Um, I'm going to assume that you've done this research, but let's just say this for anyone else's benefit. So many people are told they have to wear breastfeeding when they don't have to wear breastfeeding because of medication.

So it is so important to get a second opinion. So doctors will normally be looking up their medication information in certain places. Maybe it's provided by the manufacturer who haven't paid for trials on breastfeeding families, and it's easier for the manufacturer just to say, ask your doctor, or it's not proven to be safe during breastfeeding.

But if we dig a bit deeper, if we talk to the pharmacy specialists, we often find that it is compatible with breastfeeding. So if you haven't already done this, make sure you get in touch with the breastfeeding network. The drugs and breast milk service run by the specialist pharmacists. I'm also a big fan of UK Dilas, that's UK D-I-L-A-S, um, which is a specialist pharmacy service, which is paid for by the NHS.

They go into quite a lot of depth around medications and provide you a big long response that talks about what's going on. It may be, for example, that you can time your medication, so you take it once a day and then you can breastfeed after a certain number of hours, once the half-life of the medication has dropped in your system.

So it may be possible that you can breastfeed in a different way or partially, or even just once a day. Uh, let's assume that you've done that research. It's absolutely not compatible. You do have to breastfeeding if that's the case. When someone does have to breastfeeding quickly, and I have supported families, for example, when chemotherapy has to begin.

The main message I would give is, it's a microcosm of what I say whenever I talk about weaning. So we're honest and authentic. We're validating true emotions. We're not just focusing on distraction. We are really there for our child. We're allowing the sadness to happen. We're not frightened of that sadness.

We're making space for it, and we're showing them that we're there for them through that. Now, I would say that you, you are gonna be sad too here, very, obviously, this is not what you want. And I think it's okay to say that now 18 months is perhaps a little bit young to go into too much detail. But certainly as a principle, I think it's okay to say, mommy has to take this medicine.

It makes mommy's milk go away. And mommy's really sad about that. Mommy's sad too. I wish it didn't make my milk go away, but it has to. I'm so sad. So, you know, 18 months we we're not gonna be able to talk about, you know, toxicity and, and what happens to the milk. And the milk not being safe. That's too much.

So I probably just say that mommy's milk has to go away and this special medicine, I'm really happy I can take this special medicine because it's going to make me better and it's gonna make me big and strong. But it takes the milk away for all the mummies who use this medicine. So, mommy's milk is going to go away, and we're gonna say goodbye to mommy's milk.

Now, if you've got a few days, I, I, it sounds as though obviously you've, you've had time to ask this answer, this que ask this question. You've had time to, you know, go through this process. So it sounds as though you've got a little bit of time. If you're currently feeding to sleep, I'd probably start by changing that, looking at habit stacking, looking at breaking that feed to sleep association, trying to reduce night feeds.

That's probably where you want to begin. So that takes, that can take the longest. So I would start there. Even if you've only got a week or two weeks, start with loosening that feed to sleep association. I don't ever recommend going completely cold Turkey, so I don't ever recommend saying tomorrow there's no milk.

Not least because if you're re reasonably frequent in your feeding, you're gonna risk mastitis and, and getting really quite unwell. And we don't want blocked ducts and mastitis on, or even an abscess on top of everything else. So sometimes some children who are maybe only feeding two or three times a day respond better to a blanket.

I'm so sorry, my love milk is going away tomorrow. Everyone knows their child individually, but I would still not lie about that. I still wouldn't put plasters on nipples and talk about breasts being broken. I would still try and be honest about it and in that situation, when you were doing three feeds, I would be still sneaking off to express because you're going to need to wind down your milk production.

So going completely cold Turkey, not removing milk at all, that's likely to risk some breast health problems. If your child is 18 months, let's imagine they're feeding to sleep. We'll start with breaking that feed to sleep association. We're start starting trying to comfort them in other ways overnight.

Some people say, oh, maybe the best way to do it is my partner, if I've got a partner takes overnight times. The one time I recommend doing that is if someone is really genuinely unwell, um, the medication is happening because someone is really unwell in that situation, I think it's, it's absolutely makes sense for your partner to do more nighttime care and bedtime care.

But that's not the weaning process. That's just you getting a bit more sleep, and that doesn't necessarily make things easier for every child because some children will be extra clingy because of that separation and really struggle not having that time away from you. So presuming you're in good health and you've got the capacity to do it, I'd actually would suggest that you are the one doing this.

You stay with them overnight, you talk to them. You stay as calm and regulated as you can in this situation. This isn't what you want. So you are gonna have to work quite hard on how you stay regulated and calm yourself. Not to say that you can't express sadness, but you want to try and be in a place where you can focus on your child's feelings.

So we're trying to substitute with habit stacking that might be doing a guided meditation at bedtime. I'm a big fan of what I call sleepy stories. In the daytime, it might be that you're doing dancing, you're doing massage, you're doing extra physical play to get all that touch and and physical contact.

You're substituting with different things. It's not about milk. So the answer to this is not let's give them cows milk. That's, that's not the answer. We're looking at ways to connect with you and to meet their emotional needs. But first thing is to double, double, double check. This is definitely necessary for you.

I want to tell you about my brand new book called The Story of Jesse's Milky. It's a picture book for two to six year olds, and I wanted to write a book that was about weaning, but also not about weaning, because breastfeeding journeys end in all sorts of different ways. So Jesse's story is presented as having three possible endings.

In one ending, his mom is pregnant and Jesse's going to share his milk with a new baby. In the second, his mom is getting really tired and it's time for some mother led weaning. And in the third, we see a self weaning journey as Jesse's attachment to breastfeeding gradually fades. There are beautiful illustrations by the very talented Jojo Ford, and the feedback from parents so far has been so lovely and touching, and I'm really excited to share the book with you.

If you're interested in my other books for Older Children, I have the Breast book, which is a guide for nine to 14 year olds, and it's a puberty book that puts the emphasis on breasts, which I think is very much needed. And I also have two books about supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding for a 10% discount on the last two.

Go to Jessica Kingsley Press. That's uk.jkp.com and use the code. Mm PE 10 Makes milk picket, Emma 10. 

Next question says. Is weaning before term unnatural? I'm just reflecting on that phrase natural and how that makes weaning parents feel. What does natural term breastfeeding actually mean? 

Good question.

So I think that natural term breastfeeding means breastfeeding beyond babyhood, and if we look at Catherine Detweiler and her essay, the Natural Age of Weaning, and we compare us to primates, probably that's gonna be somewhere between two and a half and seven years old. What I don't think is natural term breastfeeding is, I don't think natural term breastfeeding is a synonym for self weaning.

So I actually believe that natural term breastfeeding is describing a length of time, not necessarily a weaning style. Because natural term breastfeeding really, and a natural weaning in, in nature often is a mutual process. And actually even the guys who will be saying, oh, I'm practicing self weaning.

Well, you gave your child food, you give them a cup, you're going to work. You're sometimes doing yoga in the evenings. Someone else is sometimes putting them to bed. Sometimes you're saying, sorry mate, I have to go and make dinner. I can't breastfeed right now. So everybody is putting little boundaries and delays and, and, and things in place.

Every, the minute you start giving your child food, you're actually beginning a weaning process. So child-led weaning is, is just something on a spectrum anyway. You know, there's no such thing as pure, pure child-led weaning where you're locked in a room and there's no food and there are no cups and you're with each other 24 hours a day.

It's all on a spectrum. And if you look at mammals, I mean, it's a cliche, but everyone talks about, you know, tiger mummy pushing tiger baby off the nipple. You know, we accept that that's part of mammalian behavior, that's part of natural mammal patterns and, and there's a version of that with humans as well.

So I, I think personally, if someone is practicing some parent led weaning and a bit of nudging and a bit of night weaning and trying to delay feeds and trying to get down to just two feeds, and their child is 3, 4, 5, I think that person can absolutely describe themselves as a natural term breast feeder.

That word natural is always a bit problematic in the world of birth and parenting. And who are we to gatekeeper? Who are we to say, no, this is the official definition of the word. There is no international committee of natural term breastfeeding or international committee of self weaning that decides, oh no, your child's having a nursing strike.

They're not self weaning. Or, oh no, you can't say self, your child is self weaning because they're only 18 months old. You know, you get to decide what these words mean for you actually. I mean, there are some things in the breastfeeding world that have definitions like you know what exclusive breastfeeding means, but when it comes to natural term breastfeeding or child-led weaning, those terms aren't set in stone.

So you get to define what they mean for yourself. For me, the word natural term is a word that describes a time. Natural term is a chronological word, and it's describing a time. And you can be parent led weaning when your child is four years old and you are still a natural term breast feeder. 

Okay, so next question.

Are there any medical benefits to just doing a two minute suckle to get to sleep with a two point 5-year-old? There's barely any milk there, so have the benefits now stopped? 

So I, first of all, I would say that it's actually quite hard to tell how much child, how much milk a child is getting when they're feeding.

It's really hard. You can't necessarily see an enormous amount when you're in the dark for a start because you're getting them to sleep. We're not gonna hear big gulping swallows as we did in the early days when we were producing, you know, 800 milliliters of milk in 24 hours. If you're just doing a two minute feed before bed, it's very likely that your milk has transitioned to what we call weaning milk.

So weaning milk, different studies suggest it starts at different amounts, but usually once we drop below about 200 milliliter production in 24 hours, our milk starts to change a little bit and becomes more similar to colostrum in its makeup. So it might even become a little bit yellowy or in color, although you probably won't see it if you're just doing this two minute feet of bedtime.

The immunological concentrations will change and it will be slightly lower in lactose, so it might, it might be less sugary and sweet. It might taste a little bit saltier. It might be slightly higher, higher in sodium, slightly higher in protein, and you may not hit the gulpie swallows, but with a smaller quantity, they're gonna get more of those immunological benefits.

Just one mouthful of breastfeeding, let's imagine the mouthful is the equivalent of a teaspoon. Just one mouthful of breast milk is going to contain antibodies, stem cells, white blood cells, things that will, you know, give your child health benefits. So really very small amounts of milk can contain significant value.

You know, if we could buy from boots, you know, a little syringe that contained the antibodies of the things that your family have come into contact with in the last 24 hours, I think we'd be giving our child the little syringe full of antibodies. If it said, oh yeah, everything, everything your family's come into contact with on the bus and in nursery and in school we've got a tailor made medicine that has all those targeted antibodies.

In this little medicine, I think we'd be giving our child that teaspoons worth of medicine. So even a very small feed, a two minute feed can produce quite a lot of liquid in that time. Um, you know, if you get a glass of water and you drink for two minutes, if you get a straw and you suck for two minutes, you're gonna be taking in quite a lot of liquid.

So older children can take a surprising amount in a very short time. And even if they're not, even if they really are just getting a few mouthfuls worth, there absolutely is a, a medical benefit to that, a physical benefit to that. But I'd refer you back to the previous question about the child who's almost certainly could dry nursing completely.

There's an emotional value to that too. That sense of connection, that sense of their needs being met, the sense of you being there for them. There are lots of benefits. And who's to say that psychological benefits aren't also medical benefits. 

Next question says, I'd love to hear about the grief of weaning your last baby.

That's a big one. And, and whoever this is, I'm guessing this is, this is your story and you're about to end breastfeeding for the last time. It's tough. It's really hard for lots of people, especially if you're somebody that's maybe had more than one child, two or three children, and, and being a parent, being a mother has been part of your identity for a very long time.

When we're in that breastfeeding phase, we're so needed. We have that really strong physical connection with our child, and we haven't ever physically separated from them. You know, we, they were inside us and then we had the umbilical cord, and then when the umbilical cord was no longer connecting us, breastfeeding connected us.

And, and saying goodbye to that is, is really tough. You know, they're going out into the world and we don't have that connection to them anymore in that physical sense. And if you know that's gonna be your last child, you're saying goodbye to a whole phase of your life, a whole identity. So I can't deny how significant that is.

And it may be that you are more at risk of what we call weaning blues from that hormonal change. I do find that lots of families I meet, the parents are perhaps older than they were in the last generation. And we get that kind of intersection between perimenopause and the grief of weaning a last baby.

So if you are in that perimenopausal phase, while you are weaning the your last baby, just be aware that there's a lot going on for you there. And I do find that breastfeeding often masks perimenopausal symptoms. And once you've lost that oxytocin and your patterns are changing, you may notice, um, some stuff going on for you in your body, changing a different way.

So just. Just keep an eye out for perimenopausal symptoms. I think we just have to sit with that grief. I just think we have to, to listen to it. We just have to allow ourselves to feel those feelings and find people to talk to and focus on what the next stage looks like. Because there is always something that we are weaning.

When we're parenting, we're always saying goodbye to something. There's always that change that brings the next stage. And you sometimes meet people who are crying on their child's birthdays and, and really get stuck in that feeling of loss. Um, so we do have to work hard to, to move past that and try and find those positives and, and find the excitement of the next stage.

But I'm not gonna deny it's, it's not hard. And, and weaning blues really can be a physical thing for a lot of people that can hit them quite hard sometimes for as long as two or three months, I would say. If it goes on much longer than that, you perhaps want to talk to a medical professional and see if you need some additional help.

I spoke to someone just this week who had a real problem with acne when they stopped breastfeeding, and sometimes there is quite a physical change to people's lives, but ideally things should be writing themselves within two or three months. If you're stuck beyond that feeling very, very low and really struggling, then maybe it's worth talking to somebody who is a mental health professional because some other stuff can be going on for you there as well.

Next question says, I know it's what I want to do with my 10 month old, so I think they're talking about natural term breastfeeding and continuing to breastfeed. I know it's what I want to do with my 10 month old, but I also know that my partner and my family will not be okay. I would love to get ahead of them on this.

How do you prepare yourself for it? 

Well, first of all. Blooming well done for knowing what you want to do and for having that strength and that conviction, and to know that you want to practice natural term breastfeeding even though you don't necessarily live in a, in a community where that's going to be fully supported.

I think you're amazing. I think we need people like you and thank you for, for advocating for your child and thank you for, for having the conviction of doing that. I wouldn't assume necessarily that your partner and family believe a certain way. People when they're coming from a place of ignorance, often don't know how they're going to feel.

And actually, even if on paper they're saying, oh my God, you don't want 'em to be breastfeeding when they're two, or you don't wanna do breastfeeding when they're three, when it's you and it's your daughter or your son, they may feel differently when they see how breastfeeding positively impacts on you.

When they see as every day goes by, what a value it brings to your life. You may be surprised. You might want to give them a copy of my book. Sorry, I don't normally plug books so blatantly, but, um, not my last book, but the one before, which is actually the one before that, which is supporting breastfeeding past the first six months and beyond.

That's a book that has information about the value of breastfeeding. It talks about lots of different aspects of how you help people to continue breastfeeding beyond six months. It also talks to families and to, um, you know, partners and gives them information and evidence as well. I would make sure that you are fully informed, but I'd also say that you don't have to get into a space where you're justifying your decision.

You really don't have to argue for this because it's their job to find negative evidence if that's what they want to do. It shouldn't be your job to justify what's the biological norm. And I've talked about this in a few other contexts, you'll find a previous podcast episode dealing with family pressure, where I talked to two inspirational women about their experiences of, of getting pressure from their families.

And one of the conclusions that we come to is actually don't get sucked into conversations. Don't have the battles Say to people, listen, you know what? We're gonna parent in different ways, and you may not agree with all the decisions that I make, but I'm making this decision based on being fully informed.

I've done my research, I feel really good about my decision. I hope you will support me, but if you don't, you know what? That's okay. Let's just not talk about this. Now, obviously, it's a bit stickier when it comes to your partner, so we need to have some really open, honest conversations about what are they, their concerns, where are their fears coming from?

Really dig, dig deep. And ask them to reflect on really where these prejudices are coming from. Is it because they're worried about their relationship with your child? Is it because they're worried about your sex life? What's happening for them? Dig deep because that's where the work needs to be done, not on you Googling and finding 10 magic research studies.

It's actually about asking people to reflect on where their prejudices come from because the World Health Organization is really clear two years and beyond for everyone worldwide. That is not just for people living in developing countries, um, or low income settings in developing countries. That is universal for everybody.

Two years and beyond is the recommendation, and that's therefore good reason for benefits for you. I presume they love you and don't want you to get breast cancer. So why would they not want your breast cancer risk to be reduced? Why would they not want your cardiovascular disease risk to be significantly reduced?

Which the research studies show it is. Why would they not want your child to be at reduced risk of ear infections, hospitalization, um, childhood cancers? There's a lot of reasons why it's worth continuing and there's, we have to have good reasons for taking breastfeeding away and if you do not want to wean the impact on you of being forced to wean really could be quite considerable in terms of your mental health.

So we're not gonna take breastfeeding awareness. We've got a good reason to do it and it's their job to come up with the reasons to stop and spoiler alert they're not gonna find them. But I would just say don't necessarily feel as though you have to have battles. Sometimes it's just one day at a time and you may not even get stuck into battles.

Okay, next question says, I've got no intention of stopping breastfeeding my 18 month old. However, I'm in my first trimester and I'm worried at the moment about the amount of time she still stays latched. It can be one to two hours to get to sleep. Night feeds are fine and only for a couple of minutes for her nap.

She still stays latched almost the whole time. If I put my finger in her mouth, she just doesn't care and will still try to feed or come off and request the other one. So my question is, how can I reduce the time feeds take without completely stopping? I still like that she falls asleep lying next to me feeding, and when it works well, it's perfect, but I can't be spending one to two hours twice a day on feeding her when we have a newborn too.

Okay, so first of all, congratulations on your pregnancy. Congratulations on tandem feeding, which is what you are doing right now. I would say you're still in your first trimester. There's a long way to go. So don't necessarily get into the trap of picturing life with a newborn right now. You know, you've got six months plus here.

She's gonna be a very different child. In six months plus time, she's gonna have a much better understanding. You're gonna be able to communicate with her, you're gonna be able to talk about your feelings. You're gonna be able to play games around timing, breastfeeds, and there's all sorts of strategies you'll be able to use even in just four or five months time that you can't use right now.

On a very basic level, even if you did nothing, when the baby is here, she's going to realize that life is different and you're gonna be able to say, I'm so sorry, my love, mommy needs to go and help the baby. So, you know, this is what we're gonna do instead. And, and this is, you know, these are how things are gonna change.

It'll be really concrete, it'll be really obvious. The motivation will be really clear. She will get it. And it won't necessarily be something that she perceives as a loss because she's gonna see the situation and understand the situation. So even if you did nothing, you are not going to be stuck in exactly as you are right now because she's gonna get that Life is different.

But let's imagine you did want to make some changes. I. So at the moment it sounds as though getting her to sleep is taking a long time. If it's taking her one to two hours to get to sleep, I would maybe recommend having a look at what's going on with her whole sleep picture. So I'm not a sleep expert. I would recommend maybe having a chat to her, an holistic sleep coach, or have a read of some of Lindsay Hook way's, books or materials.

It could be that maybe her daytime napping is quite long and she doesn't have enough sleep pressure when it comes to bedtime. Um, and that's why it's taking so long for her to go to bed. It may be that actually she needs a later bedtime and maybe instead some sort of connecting play or attachment play.

And then settling to bed will mean that bedtime takes less time and she's not latched on for so long. It may be the introducing habit. Stacking and doing things like a guided meditation around bedtime will help you to, to loosen that falling asleep association on the breast and then it when it comes to the nap.

Again, maybe doing some sort of habit stacking, encouraging her to detach. You say that when you put your finger in her mouth, she doesn't care and she'll just keep going on. So we may need to give her a little bit of motivation. Maybe it is okay to say something like, sweetie, mommy's boobies are a bit tired.

Mommy's boobies are a bit sore. Let's let 'em have a little rest just for a couple of minutes and then we can go back on again. But let's let them have a little rest. Just see if she'll start to tolerate short periods of time off the breast before she comes back on again. And you can do that at bedtime as well.

While you're doing the habit stacking, the next stage could beep. Let's just let 'em have a little rest and then we can come back on again if we need to. And then those little rest times congratulate increase. So we need to talk about the vocabulary of things being sore, the vocabulary of things leading a rest and being tired, and we're saying thank you to her when she's letting those things have rests.

And if you've got another method that she loves. So if she's got attached to the guided meditations, if she's connected to something else, she's not going to mind because that muscle memory that she can fall asleep to, other things will be there for her. But sometimes we just have to add in a bit of honesty and say, this is the reason why I'm asking you to come off.

I'm not just taking you off because of something you don't understand, or for no obvious reason. I'm taking you off because I need you to come off because mommy's boobies are tired. You know, mommy's a bit sore, mommy's a bit tired. Um, and that's why I need you to come off. And it might be that there are moments when she's a bit crossed about that and you are validating those feelings and you're saying, I know, sweetie, I know it's difficult, but let's just give them five minutes.

Let's just give them a short break and then you can come back on again. And then it's a good idea to talk about this not in the moment. So later on in the day, you'll say, now, do you remember at nap time, mommy's nipples were a bit sore? Mommy's boobies were a bit sore. Mommy asked you to come off. That was hard, wasn't it?

I know you were a bit sad about that, but thank you for letting them have a rest. Um, you might do role play with toys baby Teddy can't have big boobies, long boobies anymore 'cause mommy Teddy's boobies are a bit sore. Talking about these feelings in other contexts can be helpful as well. But essentially I would just start by being honest, explaining that you need to have a little rest sometimes, and finding other strategies that she will accept alongside breastfeeding as part of that falling asleep ritual.

And have a look at sleep pressure. Why is it taking her so long to go to sleep? 

Okay, next thing, another long one here. How do you know if you are done with breastfeeding or you're just having a temporarily hard time overall. I've had a few days of, I think I'm done when my two babies request milk and I'm just fed up and feeling touched out and telling my kids I need a break and that I don't feel like it right now.

Over the last four and a half years, I've had hard moments. I've sought support or tried to address other stressors, but lately it just seems more frequent. I've previously operated on a, don't quit on a hard day policy, but I lost my mum recently. And though feeding has mostly been a comfort to me, I feel like easier times aren't on the horizon.

I would hate to stop feeding then a year down the line, regret it. On the other hand, I don't want my kids to feel my resentment. I'm talking to my therapist, but she's not got much understanding of responsive feeding. 

Okay, well, I'm so sorry that you lost your mom. I'm also impressed that you're obviously feeding more than one child and, and four and a half years is a seriously good innings.

So I sometimes say that when you are 51% not liking breastfeeding and 49% liking breastfeeding, that might be enough to trigger a weaning experience. And you mentioned the thing about not wanting to feel resentment. I, I've talked about Philippa Perry's book a few times, and one of the things that Philippa Perry's once said in a guardian column was, if you choose between guilt and resentment, choose guilt.

We don't want resentment. We don't want children to pick up on resentment. We don't want them to see those micro expressions on our face. We don't want them to think that we don't want to breastfeed, and then that could maybe leave them in a more insecure place, which means they need to breastfeed even more.

Having said that, though, you've obviously been through a heck of a lot, and we need to really make sure you're not making a decision without having done lots of processing and really thinking through that because life without breastfeeding may not be easier. And this is really the core of this when we're thinking about ending breastfeeding.

When you take away breastfeeding, they may need to cuddle for more time to get the equivalent oxytocin surge. They may need more physical affection. Bedtimes may take, might take longer. Going back to sleep overnight, might take longer without the sedatives of breast milk, they may be more dysregulated.

You may seem more big feelings. You may see more meltdowns. You may also have the impact of that loss of oxytocin and go through a low period yourself. None of that is easier. So the assumption that ending breastfeeding, you know, means that you've got little children that potter off and go and read books and settle themselves to sleep at night, is not necessarily the reality.

So I want you to sit down and think, if breastfeeding wasn't in my life, what does my day look like? Will I be able to stay in bed for as long as I do now? Will I have to get up earlier? What's gonna happen at nap times? What will I do for bed times? What other things will I do to help me connect with my CH children?

What does that day look like and is that day exciting? Does that day feel good, or does that day feel like oof, okay. I don't know, actually know if I can get them to nap a different way. Right now, I like the fact that I can get 'em to sleep quickly. I do like the fact I can stay in bed till seven 30. I'm not sure I want to be getting up at six.

Just have a think about all those aspects in the day and and what will improve with the loss of breastfeeding. You mentioned, I don't feel like I should give up. Give up on a hard day. I've always had a problem with that phrase. Even when it comes to young people, young baby breastfeeding as well. If we're not allowed to give up on a hard day and you're having a miserable time, that means you never get to give up.

I mean, there are people who are hating every day that they're breastfeeding, and what are they meant to do? Wait, wait for a good day. Well, if there's a good day, they probably don't feel like giving up breastfeeding. I literally don't understand that concept. I would say if you are during the act of breastfeeding, you are wishing it away.

If during the act of breastfeeding you are feeling a sense of resentment, then that's a clue. Another big clue for me is when people are avoiding doing things because they know it means a breastfeeding request. So I spoke to someone this week who has been avoiding collecting their child from nursery because they don't want to deal with the breastfeeding requests.

That comes afterwards. If you find yourself hiding in certain rooms, if you find yourself going out to the park to avoid breastfeeding on the sofa, if you are changing the choices you make around your parenting and physically avoiding your child because you don't want to breastfeed them, that means you're ready to wean.

I'd also say that weaning is a spectrum. If you're not sure, why not start the beginning of a weaning journey. Just drop a few feeds, see how it feels. It's not a binary one, one or the other thing. Reduce the feeds. Get down to one feed, get down to two feeds, see how it feels. If it doesn't feel right, you can always go back again if you want to.

Next question says, have you any tips for tandem feeding and energy levels as both children 29 months and seven months are feeding at night? Feeding them is great, but it's a labour. I'm just so tired and in demand. I know no one who is feeding their toddler as much as I am, at least two to four times in the day and the same at night.

Okay, so what a lucky little person your 29 month old is and how amazing you are for having gone through a pregnancy and parented a seven month old while you're still essentially responsibly feeding your 29 month old you are blooming. Amazing. Do I have any tips for energy levels? Nope, I do not. I do not have anything magical here that I can tell you, oh yes, here, this is what you do and you'll feel super refreshed and it's all gonna be wonderful.

You probably wanna check your iron levels. You probably want to check your vitamin D levels. When your B12, um, you want to make sure you're hydrated. You want to make sure you're eating enough, you want to make sure that your support network is there for you. So do you have somebody else who can do early mornings?

Do you have somebody else who can come around and help you and, you know, take them out for a, for an hour in the mornings on a weekend? What does your support network look like? Because that's probably gonna be the thing that gives you energy levels. You haven't talked about wanting to night ween. You haven't talked about wanting to make changes.

Um, so I'm not gonna assume that you do. Obviously, if you did want to make changes, it absolutely is possible to make changes to your breastfeeding patterns when you are tandem feeding. And we'll talk about that a bit more in the episode on tandem feeding in a couple of weeks time. I wish you knew somebody else.

I know lots of people tandem feeding in this sort of situation, and I wish I could connect them to you. You are not alone. There are other people out there doing exactly what you're doing. So I hope that you are co-sleeping. I hope you are not getting up physically and moving around and going to different spaces.

This is not going to be forever. Your child's breastfeeding patterns are going to change. I had mentioned in the last question, just double check what's happening with naps? Um, what's happening with sleep pressure? Is there a reason why they might be waking up that frequently? I'm not saying by the way that waking up four times is completely beyond the realms of normal.

It's not impossible that that is normal for them. But it might be worth just having a think about calorie balance. Could they be taking a lot of calories overnight? Because you've got a seven month old, your milk supply is gonna be in a really good place. They're probably lugging away, taking quite a lot of their calories overnight.

Is it possibly worth trying to reduce the length of feeds at night just to see if maybe you can increase the calorie intake in the day? Is it worth maybe adding in some bedtime snacks and, and bedtime, uh, um, food to maybe boost those calories towards the end of the day? Not that that's gonna mean the child starts sleeping through, absolutely no, not the case at all.

But it may mean that there, that hunger is possibly less of a motivation, but you are not alone and you are amazing. Okay, wish I had a magic answer. Oh yes, take this pill. But unfortunately I don't. It's gonna be about tweaking the edges and, and just seeing what you can do to make life more manageable.

Next question says, I'd like to know about your weaning journey with your children. 

So me as in, me as in Emma. So I started my breastfeeding support journey training with the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers. Back in 2006, 2007 ish, um, is when I qualified. Um, I became a lactation consultant in 2011 and right back at the beginning of my journey, we were always really supported to appreciate that when we work with families, we're always centering the families we work with.

And we need to be really careful about sharing our own experiences because that immediately centers us, not the families we're working with. If you're working with a breastfeeding counselor who's been trained by the A BM, or trained by the breastfeeding network, or trained by the lecture league, they're not going to say to you, Ooh, you know what happened to me?

Let me tell you about my journey 'cause that what you've just said reminds me a bit of my breastfeeding story. That is going to happen in very rare exceptions, and it's not the norm because really we're encouraged to hold back a little bit when it comes to our own personal experiences. Now that might sound a bit weird because there are some really popular breastfeeding accounts on Instagram where women are centering their own breastfeeding journeys.

They're showing pictures of themselves, breastfeeding, they're talking about their own children, they're sharing their own experiences. That is absolutely valid, and that's the choice that that person's making. But they're not coming from a breastfeeding support professional background. 'cause that's not something someone will be doing if they're, if they're trained as a breastfeeding counselor or as a lactation consultant.

That really isn't what you would be seeing from someone with those hats on. One of the reasons that that's true is that imagine I'm working with someone who's struggling breastfeeding their 18 month old, or they want to practice parent-led weaning with their 20 month old, or they're trying to make a decision about whether to stop breastfeeding their three month old, and they know that I'm the poster girl for, for natural term breastfeeding, and I breastfed my children for X number of years.

And I, or I practice self weaning or whatever that, that it's very difficult then for me to center those families when my story is gonna be at the front of their minds. It's gonna be really difficult for me to produce that, that neutral message, that unbiased message. That means that we can focus on their decision and really center what they're thinking and help them reflect on their own story.

If they think subconsciously, I'm judging where they're coming from. How can I support the mom who wants to wean at eight months old when I'm the person wearing a badge saying I breastfed my child for X number of years. So that's one reason why I don't go into detail about my own weaning journeys very often, very, very rarely, and certainly not in a sort of public space.

Um, another reason I don't do that is because of my children's privacy. Now, that's not coming from an anti natural term breastfeeding bias. That's coming from the fact I've got two teenagers and this is their story. And actually. I don't talk about my children a lot on social media. I dunno if you've read Sarah Awell Smith, but one of her recent books was about child rights.

And actually, I don't believe that we live in a world where we own our children's images. I believe they own their images and they own their stories. Um, so if I was going to be telling the story of my daughter's breastfeeding journey and putting up little pictures of her, that's me speaking on her behalf and I'm not sure I have the right to do that.

So I'm big on my children's privacy as well and making sure that they own their stories and you know, maybe one day they will be talking about their natural term breastfeeding journeys and, and what stories they went through, but that, that's for them. So bit of a cop out, but I'm not going to go into detail.

I think you've probably had a sense from the things I've talked about that I did. Breastfeed beyond babyhood. In, in both cases I've got two kids. I've got a daughter and I've got a son. Um, and I did practice what we would call natural term breastfeeding. And you know, I was lucky enough to be able to do that, but I'm not gonna go into any more detail than that.

Sorry. 

Okay. Next question says, could you cover continuing to bed share with young children and a newborn and tandem feeding please? 

So, I, I will say that I tandem fed, and this is something that I have mentioned before, and you absolutely can bed share with a young child and a newborn. You just have to know how to do it safely.

So we need to make sure that the newborn and the young child are never next to each other. And that you are in the middle. So what often works well is, first of all, get the biggest bed you can, and that might include a bed that takes up the whole whole room, that's fine. Um, that might include a couple of mattresses joined together.

It might include sleeping in the other direction of on a mattress, being creative, being flexible, thinking about what your world might look like. It might mean taking down your very fancy bed frame. So you can have a floor bed that takes up the whole space. You want to make sure that a newborn is, as I said, not in the middle, not gonna be rubbing up against a toddler.

So it can be quite helpful to have some kind of bed guard, toddler mesh, bed guard, or if you've got space for it, a side cot, um, that's attached safely to the bed. So there is space behind the baby. And if the baby was to roll towards the edge of the bed, they're either going to fall into a side cot or, or a bed, you know, co sleepy type cot.

Or they're going to be hitting a mesh bed guard. Then it's you, then it's the toddler or the other, the other child. And then if you have a partner, they might be on the other side there. And we make it really clear to the toddler that they stay on that side and the baby stays on that side. Now that might mean that there are moments when the toddler has their, you have their your back to the toddler.

And that's a little bit tricky, but that is the reality. What we would not recommend is that you sleep with your back to the baby. We ideally want you to be in that natural C shape. The baby's on their back, on the flat safe mattress. You are curled around them. And normally we naturally get into that C shape.

You can't really spin and have the C shape around the toddler and then that be safe for the newborn. Have a look at the basis online website. Have a look at the co-sleeping gallery. That's what's gonna be happening with the newborn, and there's gonna be a toddler behind you. So truthfully, when you are feeding the toddler at night, you probably will need to stay awake.

You might even sit up. If you do roll towards the toddler to breastfeed on in a sideline position, you're going to need to stay awake so you can then roll back towards the baby and make sure you, you are curled towards the baby. So the risk to the baby is your bedding and overheating. It's really unlikely you roll onto the baby.

That doesn't happen unless people on the, under the influence of drugs or alcohol. And it absolutely can work to everyone in the same bed. Um, what some people do is that they start the night with the toddler or the older child in their own bedroom and then they partially co-sleep and the toddler comes through partway through the night.

So you're with just with the newborn for some of the night. There are lots of different ways of doing this, and it absolutely is possible. You do not have to spend your pregnancy panicking about the fact you're still co-sleeping with your toddler. You do not have to spend your pregnancy trying to get your toddler to sleep in a separate room or a separate bed when the baby comes.

They're probably gonna wanna be with you anyway 'cause they're feeling a bit wobbly about life changing. So accept that that's part of your parenting style and you can accommodate that. 

So next question. My girl has just turned four and she just feeds to sleep at bedtime. We've spoken about weaning a few times, but she gets upset.

I'm ready to stop. And she's not, her dad can get her to sleep for bed, but if I'm not, if I'm not there, but I'm not sure how we set a date to stop and how I will get her to sleep. She likes to hold one boob to fall asleep to starting breastfeeding was so hard, but stopping is equally as difficult. 

Yeah, absolutely.

I totally agree with that last sentence. It's amazing how many people say that to me. Um, and, and all the support is there for starting, isn't it? Where's the support for stopping It can feel really difficult. So it's great. First of all that your partner, I'm presuming that's your partner, that her dad can get her to sleep for bed if you're not there.

And you say, how will I get her to sleep? So I think the first step is, I've said this phrase a few times, habits stacking. We want you to develop some other skills. So imagine life without breastfeeding. What does that bedtime look like? And I'm a big fan of what I call the guided meditation sleepy stories.

So if you literally Google guided meditation for bedtimes, you'll see people talking about them. I like people to own them themselves. So create a sleepy story of your daughter's bedtime. You might tell stories based on her favorite characters. You might have a story where you are traveling around and saying goodbye to things that are falling asleep.

Um, you might tell a story from when she was a baby. So while you are breastfeeding, you will be telling the story. At the same time. Some people like singing. There are different ways of doing this. Some people are just humming, but you're building up for her familiarity that when she falls asleep, something else is happening as well.

There's that muscle memory for her that your voice is happening at the same time as as falling asleep. And then you might say to her. Sweetie, mommy's body's getting a bit tired. Let's just have a little rest. Again, just taking her off just for a little period of time. But you're continuing with the story that feels familiar and safe, and you might let her come back on again, but just asking her to come off for short periods of time, once she's familiar with a different method alongside the breastfeeding, it sounds as though you just need to have a really honest conversation with her and explain to her why you want breastfeeding to end.

So what I'd never recommend is saying to someone, you are a big girl now you don't need breastfeeding. I think that's, that's gatekeeping, that's projection. Who are we to say, as far as they're concerned, they do need it. Why do we get to own that? So I always say it's we. We come from an authentic place of honesty, which means that we are the ones that have an issue and we are the ones that want things to change.

So we would say, I'm so sorry my love, but my body needs to stop breastfeeding now. And I know that's really hard. I'm so sorry that I know that you might feel sad and crossed, but mommy's body needs to stop feeding now. You know, mommy's body needs a rest and so this is what we're gonna do instead. And it might be that, you know, tonight's going to be the last breastfeed that probably is a little bit soon for a four year, 4-year-old.

You might say something like, Saturday is going to be our last milk at bedtime. I wouldn't do it months and months out. I wouldn't even do it two weeks out. But at her age, probably something like four or five days notice. Um, and there may be lots of tears on those last few nights. There may be lots of tears on the last night, but as I said, you, you've already got the story built in.

You've already got the other methods built in, so there's something there for her. You've already been working on taking her off a short period, so she's used to not necessarily feeding to sleep the whole time, and then you hold space for that sadness. And you, you might do something to help her have some sort of ritual or ceremony.

Some people are giving gifts to mark that occasion and we're letting that sadness happen and we're alongside them and saying, I know this is hard, my love, and I'm so sorry, but everybody's boobies go away in the end and I'm here to help you. So it might be worth just having a listen to my weaning a Booby Monster podcast episode if you haven't already.

She might still be able to hold the boob. I mean, there's nothing wrong with continuing with that for a while longer. Um, if that's the method that really helps her. Some people are carrying on doing that for a while. But the main thing is just to explain that you want breastfeeding to end and that you're there to help her with her sad feelings, and she's allowed to have those sad feelings just as you're allowed to when breastfeeding.

Next question says, I'd be interested to hear more about pain when feeding older children. I'm really struggling to get advice when feeding my 2-year-old. I'm definitely not ready to stop, but I have the odd day here and there of biting a pillow while he boobs. 

Ouch. I'm so sorry. If you're biting a pillow, that sounds rough.

There should be people to help you. Anybody who's a qualified breastfeeding counselor really should be able to give you some principles. If you're in pain, obviously something's going on. Obviously in in very small group of people, it will be something to do with infection or something hormonal. But the most likely thing is it's something to do with positioning.

So basic principles are 2-year-old. Breastfeeding often hurts because we've lost that chin contact on the breast. So chins are starting to point down towards chests, and chins aren't touching breasts anymore. People start to grow beyond the breast and they start to look down into the breast rather than looking up at the breast.

So we want that. We still want that nose to nipple. We start with the nipple around the nose. To get them to tilt their head back like they're drinking outta glass of water. And when they tilt their head back, the chin touches the breast, which gives them more space for tongue capacity on the breast, which means they'll have more breast tissue in their mouths.

He might think, well, hang on, he's two. I can't get him to do all this. But it is about whole body movement. So if you're lying in bed, he may need to go down further down the bed to get to nose to nipple. If he's sitting on your lap, it might be that you have to lean back to make more lap space. So he's starting nose to nipple and I would be literally saying, let's play the boop game.

Boop, can you boop your nose on my nipple? Boop. Make a game out of it. I sometimes say that, get people to look up at you. So pretend you're wearing a hat and you say, can you see my hat? I would, you know, potentially, literally put a sticker on your forehead and get them to look up at the sticker. If you can see the sticker, we're ready to go.

We can't breastfeed until you can see the sticker. 'cause we want that head tilt. We want the chin away from the chest. So they come at you with that lovely head tilt. That lovely angle. If you're feeling lower teeth and lower gum range and the tongue is not extending over that lower gum range, again, that's often just about not having that chin contact at the breast when you start.

So that's just a few things to think about, but the main message is you absolutely can get help. Call the national breastfeeding help line. You can call that at any age, and they can help you think through what might be going on. Um, and you can talk in detail about the positioning that you're using and get support.

We are there for people at any point in their breastfeeding journeys. 

Okay, so that was me answering your questions. If you've stuck with me, the five people who might have listened to the whole episode, thank you very much. Really honored to be with you on your breastfeeding journeys. If you are breastfeeding beyond babyhood, you are bloody amazing.

I know it's not easy. We live in a society where we may not fully get that support, and I'm not pretending that this is necessarily easy for everybody. But thank you for listening to your guts. Thank you for supporting your children and advocating for your children. Thank you for being part of that community.

If you're breastfeeding just two weeks, it's bloody amazing on another level, but I'm specifically talking to my natural term breastfeeding right now because that's often what I'm focusing on. So thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. Keep going, fight the good fight, and I'll see you at the next episode.

Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at Emma Pickett Ibclc and on Twitter at Makes milk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist and leaving a review would be great. As well, get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey, or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast.

This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.