Bad Advice

When I was breastfeeding Olivia, as we approached the age of 1 I thought to myself, we've actually only been nursing 6 months, so it's not fair to either of us to wean. I'm just going to keep going. I didn't actually KNOW that people did this. When I googled toddler breastfeeding, I was astonished to learn I wasn't alone.
With Ella, the very IDEA of weaning at one never would have crossed my mind. Not even for a second. She'll be a year in 3 weeks (sob), and she still nurses throughout the night and at least every 3 hours during the day, although usually more. She can make it longer when I go to class (4.5 hours, with a snack of solids) but if the boobs are around, she's all up in the bizness.
Because we are approaching a year, I've been thinking about how some people DO wean at a year...and I really want to know how they do this. I'm not being judgmental, really I'm not. I'm honestly curious. If I were going to wean Ella at a year old, it'd be horrible. She's NO where near ready to wean and the idea of denying her breast just boggles my mind.
I decided to google "weaning at a year" to see what comes up. The first website is a website I absolutely detest. Every time I google something to do with parenting, this site comes up and the advice is almost always ::facepalm:: worthy. Kids Health article on Weaning frustrated me so much! They said:

Some experts say that after the first birthday is the best time to begin weaning because kids are more adaptable to change at that age. (A 2-year-old toddler, for example, is likely to be much more attached to breastfeeding and less flexible about giving it up.) A 1-year-old baby is also eating more solid foods and so may naturally lose interest in nursing. Engorgement will also become less of a problem for moms around this time because as the demand for breast milk decreases, so does milk production.

I mean, seriously...they are essentially saying if you nurse past a year, your toddler will be attached to you and be completely insatiable. ::facepalm...headdesk...sigh of frustration:: This blog post actually originally started as a question about weaning at one but now it's morphed into a frustrated blog post about getting bad information about breastfeeding. We see it all the time. We always try to correct it when we see it but it's like never ending. It can get so frustrating to encounter this ridiculous information all across the board.

As we approach our blogiversary (yeah, we're that dorky), I know I personally am looking back on why we started this blog. We started this blog because we wanted to share our experience about breastfeeding as well as provide support and information. We wanted to bust up the myths that are everywhere. As I was writing this post, and I came across some of these stupid webpages that exist, it really reminded me how important it is to keep this up. Keep up providing support. Keep up the information. The love.  The village.