My neighbor wanted to nurse, and planned to nurse, but ended up switching to
formula after about a week - I'm not sure of all of her reasons. One reason
that she spoke about was that she didn't feel at all emotionally comfortable
with the idea of nursing, or with the physical sensation - she tried to
pump, and was able to do that for six or eight weeks, bless her heart, but
it was kind of doomed to failure, I think. It's rare, I suspect, to have a
successful experience when one is only using a pump, and not nursing. She
seemed to have had a real aversion to the sensation, however.

thanks for sharing this, in my mind this falls into a different category
of unsucessful nursing. There are more mums than you think who manage to
exclusively pump, often mums of premies, but also for other reasons, they
are amazing people.

Well, I breastfed my daughter for a number of reasons - primarily the
medical benefits that I read about, but also to burn calories (I got huge
with my last pregnancy), to have the experience of it, and because everyone
I was involved with during my gestation considered it to be the norm (sort
of "Oh, well, when you start nursing..." rather than "*If* you nurse...").
I had originally planned to nurse for a year, but around 7-8 months, I just
kind of started to wear out. DD was interested in solid foods, and was
growing really well, and I was really tired of the depressed libido
side-effect that I was having. My husband was tired of that, too. So
we weaned at about that point.

again thanks for sharing, I committed myself to 1 year, mainly because
before then it would have to be formula not cowsmilk that I gave him, I
think what ever the recommened age was I would have made a committment to
that age. Hopefully I'm better educated now, ds is 9 months and still
nursing around 5 times a day, when he hits 1 I will gradually switch his
day time feeds to cows milk, I hope he continues morning, bedtime and
possibly naptime nursing for at least another year after that.