Nursing past 1 year

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know how strongly I feel about breastfeeding. I knew well before getting pregnant that I wanted to breastfeed, I never really thought about how long. When I started reading more about breastfeeding, it seemed that 6 months was what most women did and then I continued to read and it seemed more and more women breast fed until a year. I decided that I would try to breast feed for a year, and here we are at 9 1/2 months and still going strong! I was beginning to think that Jagger was self weaning because he was so distracted by the world around him, but he seems to be doing much better now. So it has got me to thinking that maybe I will continue to breastfeed Jagger past a year of age. I will start giving him cow's milk at one year, but there are still MANY benefits of breastfeeding past a year. It is also the only time that I get to snuggle with my precious baby boy without him squirming all over the place or screaming at me to let him down! I love the bonding time we get. I think I am just going to take his lead and let him self wean.

I just found this statistic and thought it was interesting:

n the US, 64% of mothers initiate nursing at birth, but only 29% are still nursing at six months, and 16% at one year.