Remember that this is unedited text -- like "letters to the editor." Identifying information, such as names, has been removed; but otherwise it is posted here pretty much as it came in. So read it as personal opinion shared with warm intentions but without authority of any kind.
Moms who are concerned about not being able to get pregnant while nursing and wanting to have #2 soon talk about mixed feelings of longing for a sibling for baby #1 yet wanting to continue to nurture the baby. (weaning #1 without the promise of #2, just a wish, if pregnancy does not happen will you regret the weaning?) My kids are six years apart because of this. . .
I am one of those women who has not gotten her period in over two years (NOT including the pregnancy) I (we) are trying for # 2 and altho I will be happy whenever he/she comes along...it is weird and a little disconcerting that I haven't had a period in so long, and I do want our children spaced close together. I do NOT however want to wean my son just so I can have the second child. So what to do? I have read Kippley's book Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing...
I have found myself on the defensive several times regarding extended nursing and fertility. I got my period back at nine months, two of my good friends got their periods back sooner than that. We did everything "right" (according to Sheila Kippley's book), and we have babies who nurse often during the day and night. I've come across many women who seem to have the attitude that if you get your period before a year or so, you're not just giving your baby enough. I myself felt that way until I got my period! . . . [E]very woman's body reacts in it's own way to breastfeeding, and a woman should not blame herself if she ovulates "early."
I hate how as soon as a doctor or nurse hears you're nursing, it's automatically, oh, YOU won't get pregnant until you wean. It DOESN'T matter to ME that THEY think I can't get pregnant. It STILL bothers me that I can have another child.
The World Health Organization reports that 5%-10% of breastfeeding, amenorrhoeic women become pregnant. (Bull WHO 1983, 61:371-82)
-- more about fertility -- a La Leche Leader informed me that you can still get pregnant without menstruating. This is never very clear in the book. I understood that you could get pregnant before you menstruated for the first time, in other words, the first time you ovulated you could become pregnant. But according to the LLL Leader, you might have been ovulating for several months but your hormones were at such a level to suppress menstruation. (I also read Sheila Kiplinger's book which doesn't make this clear either. Maybe I'm just the confused one!)
On the subject of nursing and fertility, this has come up more than once in our LLL meetings, with mothers wondering what they have to do to get pregnant again but not wean their toddler. These are mothers who do not have years to wait. Often they are 37,38,39 or older and do not feel that it is safe to wait to get pregnant again. There is also the issue that the older you are, the more that the doctor and health plan treat your pregnancy as one that could be complicated. They try to talk you into extra tests and so on. I specifically chose not to have a third child when I turned 40. It's not that I wouldn't love to have another baby, its that I don't think I could take being pregnant again.
There seems to be an incredible variety of experience with this. I was trying to get pregnant again from the time my son was about a year old, and did not conceive until he was two and a half. I think the problem was night-nursing -- he did not regularly sleep all the way through the night until 2 1/2, and it seemed for me that nursing even only once a night was enough to keep me from conceiving. However, I certainly know other women who had no problem at all conceiving while nursing frequently. One ob/gyn told me that he had heard that as long as a women nurses a total of ninety minutes a day, she will probably not ovulate.
Just a comment on "getting your period early indicates not giving your baby enough" I was never regular and it took fertility treatment to conceive our daughter after seven years! After she was born I started getting a regular period at three months! My daughter nurses on demand (she is very demanding!!) and nurses with me in bed at night.. sometimes all night! She is now 13 months old, a happy, healthy toddler still nursing on demand and I don't feel I have ever denied her anything!! Every woman is different, do what your heart tells you is right, don't listen to unsolicited comments from others!
My son is still happily nursing at several months past four. I hope to get pregnant soon, so we may end up tandem nursing. By the way, my periods returned a month after he was born, so the family bed, attachment parenting, and nursing round the clock doesn't always even give you a couple of months without ovulating!
I would love to find out why fertility returns at such different times in the same mothers. In my experience, I exclusively breastfed, slept with, attachment-parented all three of my children. But with my first, my period returned at two months postpartum. She slept through the night very early, so that could be it. With my second, who didn't sleep all night the first year or so, my period didn't return until 14 months postpartum, and I got pregnant the second month of having my period. For me, I LOVE not having my period. I was 25 when I had my first baby, so there wasn't the issue of needing to have another baby right away like some older moms feel. Last night my 2-month-old slept through the night. I am actually sad about it, because it means that my period could now return and I will have to worry about getting pregnant again too soon. (Since I don't like to nurse when I'm pregnant, I want to wait three years before I get pregnant again). But I know moms who have their period six months postpartum with one baby and two years postpartum with the next. Why? Is there a connection with body fat storing extra estrogen and allowing fertility to resume more quickly? My weight was and is higher than after I had my second baby because he was allergic to dairy products, so I wasn't eating/drinking dairy while I nursed him and I lost weight.
This has been a very emotional issue for me, and I had not realized how much it still affects me until now.
I am a 25 year-old mother of a 22-month-old nursling. I have yet to see the return of my menstrual cycle. I have found mention in literature on breastfeeding and fertility that mothers may experience a prolonged period of amenorrhea, even into the second year of their child's life. However, perhaps since this is somewhat rare, I have found little advice and support for mothers who, because of extended breastfeeding, do not experience a return of their fertility.
My daughter is nearly two and I have wanted to get pregnant for some time now. Most women do not have to choose between fertility and nursing their toddler. For those of us that must, a bit more information and a lot more support and encouragement for nursing our toddlers would be welcome. I ask that you consider including a few pages in your revised edition about extended infertility. Most helpful would be the experiences of other mothers who have gone through what I am now going through. Sometimes I feel very alone and fustrated, especially when people dismiss the importace of toddler nursing and tell me to wean my daughter. I am also quietly hurt when other friends joyfully complain about getting pregnant accidently while nursing.
When my first son was born I struggled, as many women do, with my new role as a mother. However as time went by I was able not only to accept the permanent changes his presence brought into my life, but to embrace them and enjoy them. As he grew older I grew more into the thought of child-led weaning. However, now that I was enjoying mothering and the challenges it brought I also longed for another child. I assumed that I would (as my other friends had) eventually get pregnant even though I was nursing a toddler. My cycles had come back when my son was 10 months old and when he was about 18 months, my husband and I stopped using birth control. However, the desired second pregnancy did not happen. Wanting to encourage my body's hormones to "kick in" we helped our by then 2 1/2-year-old to night wean. A year later I was still not pregnant. It was then I started to really worry. Was I just one of those people who can't get pregnant while nursing (even though he was down to just 2-3 times per day)? Perhaps there was something wrong with me. . . I went to my OB/GYN and he did not seem to think there was anything wrong, but wanted to do all sorts of invasive procedures to rule out things like endometriosis. He even asked if I was still with the "same husband"! He also suggested that the continued nursing may be hindering my hormonal level to the point where even if there was conception, there would not be a successful pregnancy. There was no way to be sure that the nursing was causing this of course and even if I did wean it could turn out that I would never be able to have other children. I had a choice to make. Did I want to wean my son who still seemed to need me in this way in order maybe have another child? Would I regret weaning if the outcome was that he would be an only child? There were not many people who could understand my dilemma. After all, I had nursed this child way past what was "normal" in their mind. Why all the agony? Thank God for my La Leche League friends who encouraged me to look deep inside and make sure my choices were well thought out and kept my family's dignity intact.
In the end I gently encouraged my son to wean. Although it is hard to pinpoint when it exactly happened, by age four he was no longer a nursing child. It was still another agonizing and grief filled year before I got pregnant. It was a year of praying and bargaining with God for the other child. About six months after coming to terms with the idea of having just one child, I found out I was pregnant. My sons are just about six years apart. Even though this was not how I had planned it, I am now enjoying seeing my two sons interact and enjoy each other in spite of their age difference. In my reading I also found out that in traditional cultures where unrestricted nursing and child-led weaning is the norm, most children are spaced about five years apart (48 months of infertility due to breastfeeding -- I think I heard or read this in something Kathy Dettwyler said). There is good reason for this. At age five most children are able to go off with Dad into the jungle to hunt or stay with mother to take care of a younger sibling and other household duties. So there was nothing "wrong" with me or my older nursing child, we were just following nature's way.
I do want at least one more child, but I think this time I will be less concerned about spacing and about encouraging weaning before the child is ready. The only other complicating factor now is my age. But I have trust in the wisdom of nature, God and of my body and am content to take what comes my way. If it is another child to love and cherish, so be it. If we are done with our two children, I choose to be content and fulfilled with them and count my blessings. It has taken me a long time to get to this place and to give up my perceived control of these things over to the "powers that be" (nature, God, my body). . .