hungry?

Alex has not been going down to sleep very well recently, most likely reason - growing baby - needs more food to get to sleep and stay asleep. Bouts of hiccups as he's trying to get to sleep don't help either - like now as I write.
Back now, rocked him to sleep, singing 'Twinkle,Twinkle'.
Unfortunately, due to being out at an allotment AGM, I missed the programme on 'Extraordinary Breastfeeding'. Title says it all. To us, the Brits, who can't wait to give up breastfeeding, get them onto bottles and/or solids, wanting to breastfeed past about a year IS considered extraordinary. But there was a mother on there still feeding her 8year old.... How must that affect the child? And a mother feeding her 2 1/2 year old, cos her own mother died of breastcancer aged 34 (breastfeeding is supposed to reduce the risk of getting it). Great, but this child was waking up constantly in the night, and his sister to be fed - they do not NEED feeding - they are just doing it for comfort, cos it's nice to be close to mummy, with your face in her boobs, and it helps you get to sleep - but not for long. Poor woman, she got no sleep herself either.

Sorry.

The stresses and pressures of breastfeeding are great. The conflicting messages new mothers receive are even greater. On the one hand you are told to breastfeed exclusively till 6 months, and longer if you can. But the food manufacturers produce food you can give from 4 months on - so surely it mst be ok to do that? Well, yes, but really babies can't actually cope with it till they're 6 months, and so if you wait, they can bypass the baby rice stuff - which is only filling them up, not giving them anything nutritious -and go straight onto pureed REAL food. And another very good reason for waiting, is that until 6 months their bodies can't fight off allergies very well, and only once they can do that should you start introducing food that could start off any potential allergy problems.