Will My Baby Self-Wean?

I know moms whose kids self-weaned between 12 and 24 months. I also know some kids don’t (or moms don’t wait long enough), and then it’s harder to wean older children. My 17-month-old and I both enjoy breastfeeding, but I worry that every month I continue, I’m making it harder for us to stop it in the future. I really hope he’ll self-wean naturally; is there any data on this? If he doesn’t, what can I do to make weaning easier, especially since he refuses to drink cow milk?
—The breast worrier

I appreciate this question, because my sense is that we think — as a society — quite a lot about early breastfeeding and not nearly so much about the later parts. This wonderful article is a qualitative report: interviews with 66 women about their breastfeeding experiences, many of them well past a year. They talk about the complicated feelings around the social acceptability (or not) of nursing an older child and also about questions of continuing versus ending.

Ending a breastfeeding relationship with an older child may be quite different than with a younger one. We do not have any good data on this — on how often kids quit on their own, on when they do it, or about how to make it easier. A few evidence-based points about on what we do know:

If you are both enjoying it and it’s working for you, there is no reason to stop. Globally, breastfeeding until 2 and beyond is common.
There is no particular reason to force the drinking of cow’s milk. Your child needs calcium, but they can get that from other dairy (cheese, yogurt, ice cream) as well as non-dairy sources.
Changing a breastfeeding relationship with an older child may require consistency and boundaries, but not necessarily. Your child may decide they are done with it before you are, or you may both wind down together. But you may also decide it is time to stop before they would like to. If that happens, the approach is likely to be just like any other change you want to make. You explain, you tell them when it ends, and then you follow through. There may be tears, but they will be short-lived.

Good luck. And also, right now you have no problem! So please save the worries for when you need them.