Breastfeeding and weaning

[Dreamingofpinkafter2blue]

He's had some issues gaining weight (20 pounds at nearly 19 months). He only has 4 teeth and his poops are not even completely solid yet. I would guess he still nurses about 6-9x a day. He was just recently night weaned. So I do kind if think he is getting a lot still but I don't know for certain.

Interesting guess at the improvement of maternal condition. I've never thought about that!

[amyanne]

I was only nursing one time at bedtime- to me nursing that much (way to go!) seems like it would be lowering your condition (pink)...but I'm no expert!

[atomic sagebrush]

Fwiw I got pregnant with ds2 while nursing 20 mo ds1. If I had to theorize, I'd guess that weaning is actually *improving* maternal condition because there is less and less of a drain on your calories/energy. I don't know how much you're nursing your babe, but I think it might have to be quite a bit to sway?

Exactly. It's more than just condition, it's also fertility (and even BF 1 time a day may reduce fertility slightly due to the hormones required to make milk) It doesn't take much at all.

If you're looking back thinking, "well this can't possibly work because I got a boy while BF" what you need to take into consideration is that you are in a very small minority even nursing at that stage (most women would wean long before 20 months) and that the subset of we who choose to do that, may be coming into TTC a little more "set" for blue (due to potential "crunchiness" and also higher economic status that gives us the luxury of still nursing!) We cannot do a straight comparison of BF because we are a special case - in a world where most women never nurse or only for the first 3-6 months tops, people who are still nursing toddlers are NOT a randomly selected group, does that make sense?

In other words, if you are coming in to TTC with an 80% chance of a boy, and you're doing something that brings you down to 65% likely to have a boy, it's still a HUGE sway tactic, even though you could look at statistics and think "oh gosh this actually sways blue". That is NOT how this works because it's not a random sample and it's not a 50-50 chance - some of us are more than 50% likely to ahve another boy!!!

[Dreamingofpinkafter2blue]

That makes perfect sense. And just in my unique circumstance, since I still don't even have a cycle, I would venture to guess that my body is particularly sensitive to it since it's reducing my fertility by not getting a period?

With my first, even when I was only nursing 1x a day, I still didn't get a cycle back until he was completely weaned.

[atomic sagebrush]

No one can really say, it can be different for every time through anyway.