Extreme Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is all over the news. There’s Salma Hayek nursing the starving baby of another woman on a UNICEF fact-finding trip to Sierra Leone.

Here’s new mom Naomi Watts crediting her trim post-baby figure to breastfeeding:

“He’s sucking it all out of me.”

Don’t overlook the Facebook dust-up, where members are posting nurse-ins in response to the site’s decision to ban breastfeeding photos.

Perhaps the most jarring of all reports, though, are the so-called extreme breastfeeders.

Should children decide when it’s time to stop?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding through the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutually desired by mother and child.

“There is no upper limit to the duration of breastfeeding and no evidence of psychologic or developmental harm from breastfeeding into the third year of life or longer.”

But just 36 percent of babies in the U.S. are breastfed through six months, according to a 2008 report from Brigham Young University. For those who do practice extended nursing, the average is closer to three years. But even the most committed strain under the judging glares of family and strangers.

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Extreme Breastfeeding

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