Comfort nursing can be a tool to promote a bond and closeness between mother and baby, and it can continue after breastfeeding stops as long as you both enjoy the process. Breastfeeding doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
I comfort-nursed my baby until he was just over three years old, and it was only because he eventually stopped asking.
A mother’s story of comforting care
Comfort nursing is often described as babies going to the breast when they need comfort and are not receiving a full feed.
But you don’t hear that often comfort nursing with no nutritional value. Maybe you hear it more like, “she’s just using you as a pacifier.”
And there, I say, “Yes.”
My feeding journeys and ideas about feeding definitely changed when I had children. I couldn’t breastfeed exactly like I thought due to previous breast reduction.
But with each subsequent pregnancy, I was able to breastfeed for a longer period of time (which is normal). For my third, I didn’t have to start adding until about six months old.
My previous two babies stopped breastfeeding shortly after my supply stopped, but my third baby is different.
I slept with him, so the breast was always available. He was often entertained by it, and perhaps that was the reason. But as my supply dwindled, she continued to nurse after each bottle.
Then he moved on when he needs me.
If someone feeds him, that’s fine. As she approached ten months of age and the “taboo ideas” of comfort nursing became more apparent, I will redirect him when he asks. And soon he stopped asking.
But then he got sick at 15 months old, and he barely ate anymore. He wasn’t feeling well, and I did more contact naps. As soon as he reaches down, and in that moment, I want to be there for him, however he needs me.
She comfort-nursed, and we never looked back. Usually it was at bedtime—only in public, once or twice, when he was overtired and overstimulated.
I realized that I stopped comfort nursing first because I thought it was right for him (at least, that’s what I told myself). But, in retrospect, it wasn’t for her but for me and my fear of other people’s thoughts.
My fear of “explaining myself” to others.
The idea that I could comfort him in the same way that something could start playing in my mind. Why should I change the human connection? – that he is looking for and I am ready to give – with something (like a pacifier)?
As with all stages of motherhood, why do we limit ourselves to thinking that only one way is acceptable? There are so many different ways to make parenting work.
So often, our ideas of what we want our feeding trips to take us—may be an undiagnosed oral dysfunction, illnesses, work obligations, or just life changing and changing our path.
Regardless of your journey, if you want to have a connection or don’t want to give up breastfeeding and the baby doesn’t either, remember that breastfeeding doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It can be however you and your baby choose.
A relationship between the two of you and no one else has a place there.
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