Studies show that breastfeeding can be one of the best things a working mother can do for herself and her baby. Breastfeeding makes daily separation from baby less painful: After several hours apart, nursing is a loving reunion. And working mothers who nurse are better employees: breastfed babies are sick less often—a healthy baby is important to a working mom.

Mothers who nurse, do so not only because they want the very best nourishment and protection for their babies and because they personally derive many practical benefits from breastfeeding, but simply because they enjoy the experience. The loving relationship established between mother and infant at the breast is emotionally fulfilling and pleasurable. You’ll know no greater reward as a mother than witnessing your child grow from your body—first in the womb, and then at the breast. —Kathleen Huggins

Full-term breastfeeding

While the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding one year “and beyond”; and the World Health Organization recommends two or more years, the present norm for breastfeeding is only up six months. When we recognise that breastfeeding is more than just giving milk, but also an entire optimal neuro-developmental system that ensures emotional and physical wellbeing, then breastfeeding for as long as mutually desired by mother and child is seen as a wise practice.

The practice of nursing for the WHO-recommended two years or beyond, is often called “extended breastfeeding,” but it reality it is “full-term” breastfeeding. I believe the term extended breastfeeding is misleading—an example of how semantics are used to make a practices sound extreme, when in truth it is the current norm that is the aberration. It is more accurate to refer to the current norm as “abbreviated” breastfeeding.

References:

Suzanne Arms, Immaculate Deception II
Kathleen Huggins, The Nursing Mother's Companion
Gale Pryor, Nursing Mother, Working Mother

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