Dear Laura... If I feed my baby ‘on demand’ - do I have to put limits on their nursing when they’re a toddler??

Hey team - welcome ‘Dear Laura’ - a monthly column where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer the questions that readers submit. If you’d like to submit a question for me to answer next month you can submit it here. I’m happy to answer Qs about anti-diet nutrition, developing a more peaceful relationship to food and weight-inclusive health, body image challenges, and, of course, challenges with feeding your kiddos. Please give as much detail as you’re comfortable with and let me know if you’d like me to include your name or keep it anon.

This question relates to breastfeeding and breastfeeding beyond the first year. If conversations around breastfeeding feel upsetting or triggering to you then please feel free to skip this post and do whatever you need to do to care for yourself.

There is so much pressure to breastfeed ‘successfully’ and yet it is probably one of the hardest skills I’ve ever tried to learn. Support is woefully inadequate - personally I was given horrendous advice from an NHS breastfeeding ‘expert’ and also had one of my nipples painfully suctioned by a NICU nurse who told me my nipple was ‘too flat to feed’ (not a thing). I’ve also suffered from extreme breastfeeding aversion and know how harmful pressure to breastfeed is. I was lucky to access a lactation consultant who helped enormously. But I know that this support isn’t available to everyone.

Likewise, I have also experienced the enormous pressure to stop breastfeeding at the age of one, the complete dearth of information or support on breastfeeding a toddler, the stigma of feeding an older toddler/ child, and the conflicting information from professionals about the role of milk in the diet. All of this is despite the estimate that humans without any sociocultural programming would self-wean between 2.5 - 7 years.

This is to say that this is a completely judgment-free zone when it comes to choices about feeding your infant, toddler or older child. I support your choice to breast/chest feed, bottle feed, exclusively pump, combi-feed, formula feed, or any other permutation of feeding your infant. It is entirely valid. My role as a nutritionist and feeding professional is to provide support, guidance, and reassurance, for whichever way you decide to feed your kid.

Alright - here’s this month’s Q!

My daughter will be one in December and I am currently planning to breastfeed until she self weans. She’s always been a snacking baby, she’ll do big feeds before going to sleep but mostly just has four or five minutes every hour or so. I had a lot of pressure from the health nurses to force her to feed longer and less often even though there were no concerns about her weight gain or anything like that.

I didn’t realise how much that affected me until I was reading about putting limits on breastfeeding near meal times for toddlers. I had a very strong emotional response to the idea and really don’t want to do it, but I guess I can work through that if it’s what’s best for her. For solids we’re mostly trying the division of responsibility thing although I do give her some of my food if she sees me eating outside of meal times and is interested.

Hope that all makes sense, I guess essentially my question is do I have to put limits on my feed on demand approach to breastfeeding to fit in with the routine for solid meals once she’s one year old?

Oooooft.

I want to just give this parent a huge hug. Breastfeeding is a trip. But then when we add on all these rules about how to do it ‘right’; set limits after one, time the feeds, don’t let them feed for comfort. Blah blah blah. It’s all horse shit.

It’s so tough to navigate nursing a toddler. There’s virtually no support short of ‘set boundaries’ in this vaguely threatening way that insinuates that they might otherwise starve or develop a deficiency through lack of solid food. And then there’s a really muddled interpretation of the Division of Responsibility (DoR) that confuses things even further. And it’s so easy to tie yourself in knots trying to figure out if you’re doing what’s best for you and your bub. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had to check out of most social media parenting ‘advice’ because it constantly undermines my own instincts and intuition around parenting.

My sense is that your instinct is ‘no, I don’t want to put limits on nursing my toddler because that doesn’t feel good to me’ (you noted having a visceral reaction to that idea). So my short answer is BACK YOURSELF. You don’t need me, or anyone else to tell you what is right for you and your little buddy.

But here’s my longer, nutritionist answer.