YES!!! I'm still nursing her!

Ok...I'll apologize in advance, but tonight is a rant. I need a little time on my soapbox or this will make me crazy, lol. Emilie will be thirteen months in two days and someone had the nerve recently to ask me "Are you seriously still nursing her?". Yes...yes I am!!!! And honestly...I'm damn proud of it!!!

First of all, nursing is the most natural way of providing nutrition for your infant. But its not just about nutrition, breastfeeding is also a comfort! Think about it for a second, within the first hour of Em's life she was already being taught to nurse. I had barely been rolled into recovery after the surgery and they were opening my gown and placing her on the breast, she instinctively knew what to do (unlike her nervous Mommy) and is something she's done SEVERAL times a day for the entirety of her life. So to those that think that just because she can have cows milk that I should abruptly stop nursing her...well...all I can nicely say is that I completely disagree. I think that weaning should be a very slow process and its a process we've begun. We've dropped a feeding and started introducing cows milk. She's not all that interested in the cows milk, ok she's not really interested at all, but we'll get there.

Here's another thing...Why do you care if I'm still nursing? I mean really??! Again...its the best nutrition she can be provided, its comforting, and its not that abnormal to be nursing after the twelfth month. In fact, a lot of Mom's choose to breastfeed until twenty-four months. I don't plan to do that, I have always said for me that is too long, because by then Emilie would be verbalizing her need/want to nurse and by that point I feel its time to have her on cows milk. But I strongly feel that taking away something that is comforting and habit for her needs to be done with extreme care, which to me means doing it slowly.

So...that's my rant for tonight. Feel free to disagree :) But you look at this sweet face and tell me that you wouldn't want to be sure you were doing things as carefully as possible!