Lactation Narration

Here are the answers to some of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked about tandem nursing.  If you have any other questions about tandem nursing, let me know in the comments and I’ll try to answer! I’d love to hear about others’ experiences with tandem nursing too!

Is it possible to keep nursing while I’m pregnant? And is it safe?
Nursing through pregnancy is definitely possible – I did it anyway! In most cases, it is safe. Nursing can cause mild contractions, but no more than sex would cause. So, the general rule of thumb is that if you are safe to have sex, then you are safe to keep breastfeeding. If you are put on pelvic bed-rest, you might consider that good cause for weaning. You can continue to nurse all the way through your pregnancy if both you and your baby want to, but something like 70% of babes will wean during pregnancy, either by mother’s or baby’s choice. If your older baby is still nursing when your new baby is born, that is called tandem nursing.

How do I decide if I even want to tandem nurse?
Read Adventures In Tandem Nursing, It has a lot of information on nursing during pregnancy and making the decision about tandem nursing, as well as tips on actually tandeming.

When I was pregnant, I hoped that Munchkin would wean on her own just so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the decision of whether to wean her or tandem nurse. But in the end, I decided that I wanted it to be her choice when to finally wean, not mine. During my pregnancy, I imposed limits on how often and how long she nursed at a time, but I did not cut her off. She went down to nursing only about once per week for the last 6 months of my pregnancy. I kept thinking she was about to wean, but she just didn’t. If I had wanted to, I think I could have weaned her then, but I because I wanted it to be child-led, I decided to leave that final call up to her. She didn’t wean, so we ended up tandem nursing.

What changes can I expect when nursing during pregnancy? Does my milk change when I’m pregnant? What about colostrum?
You will probably experience nipple pain while nursing during pregnancy. Many women choose to wean or at least decrease nursing because of this. I chose to night-wean largely because of it.

During early pregnancy, your milk may start to taste different to your baby because the proportion of salt to sugar changes. The saltier taste may make baby feel thirstier, and thus make her want to nurse even more! This can create a problem for mom if she is already experiencing nipple pain associated with pregnancy. Munchkin was old enough to be comfortable drinking water when I got pregnant, and she would chug water after nursing during my first trimester! Other babies may wean abruptly because they don’t like the changed taste of the milk.

Your supply will probably decrease at some time during your pregnancy. Your baby may want to nurse more in response to the low supply, or she may lose interest instead. At some point in your pregnancy, your milk will turn to colostrum. If your baby is still getting most of her nutrition from nursing, you may have to supplement at this point. Your baby might also decide she doesn’t like the taste of the colostrum and wean at this time. If your baby drinks a lot of the colostrum, her poops may become softer again, like a younger baby. The colostrum will remain until after the birth (so don’t worry, the new baby will still get her fair share of colostrum!), and then your milk will come in as normal after a few days.

Many babies wean during pregnancy due to the loss of milk and/or the changes of taste. Because I knew that I wanted to nurse Munchkin for at least two years, I waited until she was two to try to get pregnant. I would have been okay with it at that point if she had decided to wean during my pregnancy, but I wasn’t willing to risk it sooner.

How can I prepare my toddler for tandem nursing?
Munchkin was never one to nurse her “babies” herself much, but she always liked for me to nurse them. When I was pregnant, one way that I helped her acclimate to the idea of tandem nursing and “sharing the na-nas” was to tandem nurse Munchkin and a doll. Sometimes I would end up tandem nursing two dolls and Munchkin just watched!

We also talked about how Munchkin could drink Mommy’s Milk or cow’s milk or chocolate milk or juice or water and eat lots of foods, but the new baby would ONLY have Mommy’s Milk, so it was important for the new baby to get hers first. I think Munchkin understood that by the time Sweets was born, but we still kept talking about it after the birth too.

Will my toddler wean if I have to be away from her for the birth?
I didn’t worry about Munchkin weaning during the time when I would be in the hospital birthing Sweets. Munchkin was going days and days without nursing at that point – often 7-14 days – so I didn’t think that 2-3 nights would make a difference in that regard. It didn’t phase her at all.

What can I expect after the new baby comes?
I’ve heard of toddlers who nurse all the way through pregnancy and then decide that nursing is for babies once they see the new baby and just wean suddenly. I’ve heard of others who are so happy that their new sibling brought back the milk and nurse almost as much as the new baby does!

Munchkin went from nursing once a week during my pregnancy to about once or twice a day after Sweets came home. Then, one day when Sweets was about a week old, Munchkin came right off and said she didn’t like Mommy’s Milk anymore, and she didn’t nurse for several days. I thought she had suddenly decided to really wean. I kept offering, partly because I was engorged and would have liked her to nurse just then, but she refused. Then a few days later, she really wanted to nurse again, so went back to it. It was all very unpredictable.

How do you make sure the baby gets enough?
I let Munchkin nurse on the side that Sweets is done with. So, I would nurse Sweets on the left as long as she wanted, then when she switched to the right side, I’d let Munchkin nurse on the left. This way I felt that Sweets was getting everything she wanted.

Do you nurse them both at the exact same time? Doesn’t the toddler push the baby away?
Sometimes I nurse them together – one on each side – and sometimes I make Munchkin wait. We say “sometimes we share and sometimes we take turns”. When I nurse them together, Munchkin is very affectionate toward Sweets, and strokes her head and holds her hand, which is very sweet. They have a very close relationship already, and I think nursing together contributes to that. Now that Munchkin is older, she seems to have forgotten how to get milk when she nurses. If she nurses together with Sweets though, she can get milk because Sweets brings the let-down. She says that Sweets brings her the milk and is very appreciative.

How do you nurse two together, logistically speaking?
There are lots of options, but I tend to like a position where I am leaning back with each child lying long-ways down my body supported on the outside by my arms. Basically, just find any position that’s comfortable and go for it!

Does the toddler get jealous?
I don’t think that tandem nursing has caused friction or jealousy at all. Actually, the opposite. I think it was something that they could share in common. They would hold hands or Munchkin would stroke Sweets’ head. As long as Munchkin could get hers too, she didn’t feel like Sweets was taking anything from her. I think that if Sweets got to nurse and Munchkin couldn’t, that THAT would be more likely to cause friction.

Isn’t it exhausing to nurse two?
Munchkin kept up nursing about once a week throughout my pregnancy and once Sweets was born she went back up to about once a day, and later twice a day before dropping sessions again. Honestly, tandem nursing hasn’t been very difficult for us because she doesn’t nurse all that much. It’s not like having twins where they are both nursing all the time. Once the newness of the baby was past, I limited Munchkin to nursing only first thing in the morning or last thing before bed, and the rest of the time the milk was for Sweets. I usually let Munchkin nurse for the time it takes me to read her a book (and then choose the book I want accordingly!). Setting limits like this helps me not feel burnt out.

What do others think when they see you tandem nursing?
Since Munchkin only nurse at certain times, it cuts way down on the times when anyone else would ever see me tandem nursing them, unless they are at our house at bedtime. There have been a few occasions when people have seen it, and if they are surprised, I just say “hey, two boobs, two babies!”

A version of this post also appeared as a guest post on Natural Parents Network (where I am a moderator on the forums) and Code Name: Mama

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Signing with Children for Fun and Communication

Sweets is now 16 months old, and she doesn’t talk. She is currently being evaluated by specialists and is enrolled in developmental therapy, but she doesn’t talk yet. At all. Not even “mama”.

She is learning to sign though!

We already know lots of American Sign Language (ASL) vocabulary in our family – we signed for fun and early communication with Munchkin since she was a baby, and her speech developed typically. We have the entire collection of Signing Time episodes, and Munchkin knew about 50 signs by the time she was Sweets’ age (Munchkin even auditioned for Baby Signing Time!). So when the therapist said we should sign with Sweets, we knew that would be easy – we were already doing it!

For my typically developing child, signing supplemented her communication as a baby and became a fun activity for us to learn together as she got older. For my developmentally delayed child, signing is her only method of communication at this point. Sweets can do about 8-10 signs now, but mostly uses two of them at this point – MILK (as in “mama’s milk”) and MORE.

It has been wonderful to see her learn that she can communicate through signing. Now that she can sign MILK (“breastmilk,” that is), she does it all the time! I think it’s more because it’s fun to ask rather than because she really wants to nurse all the time. I imagine her inner monologue:

“Hey – I can do this thing with my hand . . . and mama stops what she’s doing and pays attention to me . . . and then I get to nurse! How cool is that?! Let’s see if it works again. Yep! Again? Yes! This is awesome power!”

Because I respond to her signing, it encourages her to ask again. And this is teaching her the function of language even though she can’t speak yet. I think it has been especially meaningful for her to learn to sign MILK because nursing is very important to her.

Signing for Communication

The primary benefit that most people desire when they sign with their hearing baby is added communication with a baby who is pre-verbal. When a pre-verbal baby or toddler can communicate her needs, she has less frustration and less need for crying and tantrums. But besides communicating basic needs, signing can also give you a window into the thoughts of your small child.

I remember a time when I was carrying 13 month old Munchkin to the car, and she suddenly started signing BIRD excitedly. I looked around, and indeed there was a bird in the tree nearby! I had known that she could sign BIRD when looking at a picture of a bird in a book, but this was the first time that she really initiated a sign to indicate an interest in the world around her rather than to express a need. It really made me aware at that moment that she was an actual little person inside this little baby body, with her own thoughts that I wasn’t necessarily aware of, and her thoughts were about more than just her basic needs. I loved that I had that window into her thoughts at that young age.

Other Practical Benefits of Signing

Besides the obvious benefit of communication with your pre-verbal child, sign language also has benefits for your child even after she is verbal. Your child can communicate with you discreetly and quietly when you are in public. Some people have “code words” for their toddlers to use when asking to nurse in public because they don’t want to advertise their nursing to everyone. Signing accomplishes the same goal of discretion when your toddler asks to nurse in front of others.

Another benefit is that your little one can ask to nurse without interrupting your adult conversations. This benefit isn’t limited to just nursing of course. When I was a little girl my mother taught me to sign TOILET when I needed to use the bathroom in public places, which worked well if she was in the middle of conversation with other adults or if I was just feeling too shy to mention it out loud. Another benefit is that signing can be used across a distance when speaking would be impractical or ineffective. I recently used signing in this way from across the room in a restaurant – “YOU WANT WATER, MILK – WHICH?” – and Munchkin was able to tell me what kind of drink she wanted me to order for her.

How Early Can I Start Signing with My Baby?

When your baby is able to make controlled hand movements, your baby can start signing. Can your baby clap, wave, or point? That’s no different from signing! For many babies, this happens around 8-12 months old. You can sign with baby from the start if you want, or you can wait to start signing until your baby can wave. By the way, when I taught my girls to wave, I taught them to do a “princess wave” with an open hand that rotates at the wrist. Many people use a wave with a baby that involves folding the fingers down over the palm, but I find this to be hard to distinguish from the MILK sign, so I chose not to use that type of wave to avoid confusion.

Baby Signs vs ASL

If your goal with signing is just to serve as a bridge of communication before your child is able to communicate verbally, then you may consider “baby signs” instead of ASL. The advantages of baby signs are that they are supposed to be easier for babies to do, and you can make up your own signs instead of having to learn vocabulary first.

I am not worried that ASL signs might be “too hard” for my baby any more than I worry that English words are too hard for her. Babies learn to sign by first doing a “baby talk” version of signs the same way that they do with verbal language, and with practice they learn to sign properly. I prefer to use ASL signs because ASL is a real language, just like English.

By teaching ASL and continuing to use signs after my children learn to talk, I am giving them the building blocks for learning a second language. Because we use real ASL signs and not made-up signs, anyone else who knows ASL signs can understand and communicate with my child too. This has been helpful at daycare, where our teacher also uses ASL signs in the classroom at our request. And one day in the future, my daughter might meet a child whose primary language is ASL, and they will be able to communicate together! That could never happen with baby signs.

What Sign Should I Use for Breastfeeding?

Sweets starts the sign MILK with an open hand

Sweets completes the sign MILK with a closed fist

Many people just use the sign MILK to mean breastfeeding, and then later they use it to mean cow’s milk. There is not much confusion between the two, because the timing often doesn’t overlap in our culture – breastfeeding ends and then cow’s milk begins, and there is no need for the child to have to differentiate between the two with different signs, because she is not experiencing both at the same time.

But for those of us who nurse into toddlerhood, there can be confusion if you want your child to be able to differentiate between nursing and cow’s milk when signing. In our house, we just use the sign MILK to mean any milk at first, but as she gets older, we add MOMMY-MILK or COW-MILK to differentiate. There are other ways to sign for nursing when you want to differentiate from milk in a cup too.  Below are some more examples of other ways you and your child can sign milk (breastmilk or cow’s milk).

1. Use one of the ASL signs for BREASTFEED
2. Use just the sign BREAST for nursing, and the sign MILK for cow’s milk
3. Make a sign like FEED but start the motion just below your breast and extend it down toward the baby for nursing
4. Use the bent O hand shape (like EAT) and tap above each breast for nursing
5. Use the sign MILK for nursing, and the signs CUP-MILK for cow’s milk
6. Use the sign MILK once for any kind of milk, but sign twice (MILK-MILK) for nursing
7. Sign MILK near the breast for nursing, and sign MILK out in front of you for milk in a cup
8. Make up your own sign for breastfeeding!

I lay here snuggled close to you in your bed. Your little hand still cradles my nipple, but your lips no longer do. Your eyes are drooping, but you are not yet asleep. I caress your hair at your temple, and hum softly. I finish a verse and pause, and you sleepily say “Try again, Mommy,” so I begin the song again. I can remember a moment such as this, when I must have been just about your age: cradled sleepily in my own mother’s arms while she sang to me in the dark, waking just enough to ask her to sing it again. And as I wonder what of this you may recall when you are older, I notice that you are sound asleep, and I stop my humming. And I hope that I, at least, will remember this moment always.

I wrote that two years ago about Munchkin.  I was weeping as I wrote it because I felt so sure that she was so close to weaning.  I wondered if she was old enough that she would remember later how much she loved nursing.  During my pregnancy with Sweets, Munchkin had gone from nursing 5 times per day to less than once per week.  She even went two weeks between nursing sometimes.  I was sure that our nursing days were numbered.  And the thought of it made me cry.  My goal had been to nurse her for two years, and we had surpassed that by another half a year, but I still wasn’t ready for her to be done.  Nursing had been such a big part of our relationship for so long (well, her entire life), certainly much more than a mode of nutrition.  Even though she only nursed sporadically, I still very much identified myself as a “nursing mother” and her as a “nursing toddler.”

But it didn’t end.  Munchkin continued to nurse sporadically for the rest of my pregnancy, and then tandem nursed after Sweets was born.  There were a few other times when I was just so sure that she was about to wean, like the time she outright told me that she didn’t want to nurse because it made her feel sick, and then she still didn’t wean.  I remember a La Leche Leage meeting when I was on maternity leave with Sweets – the topic was weaning and I was in tears thinking that Munchkin would likely wean soon.  As time goes on though, I’m not so weepy about it anymore. When I think about her weaning now, I feel more proud than sad.  I think I must be ready.  Now I’m just waiting for her to be ready too.

I find myself thinking again that Munchkin is going to wean very soon.  She is now 4.5 years old and has started complaining that she “can’t get to the milk” when she nurses, which upsets her because she does not want to wean.  I’m not sure why it happened, but it seems that she’s not able to get a let-down by herself anymore.  If she nurses together with Sweets, she can get milk, but not usually on her own now.  This has been going on for about two weeks, and she has drastically cut down on how often she nurses, from twice most days lately, to only 3 times all week.  So, again, I wonder if she is going to be weaned soon.  But this time I know better than to hold my breath.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

Sweets is 16 months old, and I’m still pumping at work.

Munchkin never took a bottle, but I still pumped with her for my comfort and supply anyway. And I nursed her on my lunch break. I did need some milk to send to daycare – just in case she would take it, and because they legally had to at least offer her something – but I only sent 4 oz per day (2 bottles or cups with 2 oz each) after I went back to work full-time. Four oz was easy enough to get though, and I didn’t have a lot of pressure on my pumping output because I knew she wasn’t drinking it anyway – I was pumping for me, not for her. I dropped my afternoon pumping at around 9-10 months, and then I dropped my morning pumping right at 12 months. I was glad to be done with pumping as soon as possible!

But I kept nursing Munchkin at lunch until she was 21 months. I timed my arrival at daycare for right after lunch, but before nap time, so I could nurse her to sleep and then sneak out while she was napping. This worked out well for everyone because then there wasn’t a sad goodbye when I had to leave again. And the teachers liked it because it was one less kid they had to put down for nap. Munchkin would wait for me on her nap cot until I got there to nurse her, and around 20 months I noticed that sometimes she would already be asleep by the time I got there. By 21 months she was usually asleep when I got there, so I just stopped going. It seemed like a very natural way to wean the lunch feeding, and by then I found that it wasn’t a problem to go all day without nursing or pumping, and that I could still nurse at home on evenings and weekends without any issues.

With Sweets, it has been a different situation, because she had no problem taking the bottle. So I experienced pumping at work as most moms do who pump at work – I had to pump enough milk to have enough for daycare! Fortunately, my daycare provider feeds on-demand and I didn’t have a daycare overfeeding issue like so many other working moms I talk to. I started off at 4 months sending two 2 oz bottles for half-days. At 6 months I went back full-time, and I sent four 2.5 oz bottles, plus I nursed on my lunch break. Most days, Sweets would only drink 3 of these bottles, so the 4th was just a buffer bottle, just in case. That meant that I really had to pump at least 7.5 oz per day, and anything extra went towards making the buffer bottle. At maybe 7 months, I was sending 3 bottles of 3 oz plus a buffer bottle. So in general, I needed about 9-10 oz per day on average. I found that some days I pumped more and other days less, but over the course of the week, it always worked out to be enough. I pumped on Monday what I would send to daycare on Tuesday, and on through the week. At the end of the week, I kept Friday’s milk for Monday, and froze whatever was left over in ice-cube trays.

When Sweets was 12 months, I considered that I could cut down on pumping now and she could start drinking cow’s milk at daycare. But she hadn’t taken well to yogurt yet, so I decided to hold off on cow’s milk for a while more. I was also still nursing her at lunch, but this was getting more difficult. Unlike Munchkin, Sweets would often still be awake after nursing, and then would cry when I left. Also, Munchkin and Sweets were together in the same home daycare, and Munchkin would keep herself awake so that she could see me too when I came in. The lunchtime visits were proving to be a disruption to their day, so at 13 months I decided to stop nursing at lunch. I was still pumping twice per day, but Sweets was only drinking two 3 oz bottles by this time with her table food, so I only needed 6 oz per day. At 15 months, I decided to cut down to pumping only once per day. I sent whatever milk I got (anywhere from 3-6 oz) to daycare and her teacher supplemented her with cow’s milk for the rest, which she could tolerate by then. And that’s where I am now – back to pumping for my comfort and supply more than for the milk. I figure that with Munchkin, I did continue to empty my breast once per workday until 21 months, and I guess it is the same with pumping for Sweets.

I do often wonder whether I could stop pumping at work at this point though and still keep my supply for nights and weekends, or if it is really necessary to keep pumping. I guess I’m taking a “better safe than sorry” approach because I don’t want to risk it. Munchkin was always very attached to nursing, but Sweets is a different kid and is less interested. I worry that if the milk wasn’t readily available when she wanted it, that she might wean before I am ready. It is my high priority for her to nurse for a minimum of 2 years, and I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize that if I can help it.

I remember that with Munchkin, I thought that 12 months would be the maximum that anyone would pump. I knew plenty of people who practiced “extended breastfeeding”, and plenty of people who worked while breastfeeding, but I didn’t know anyone who pumped longer than 12 months. Most of the advice that I’ve gotten on this topic has come from people who haven’t nursed until at least 2 years, which is a high priority for me. I wonder if their advice to quit pumping at 12 months would impact my milk supply so that I would have trouble nursing at home until at least 2 years. I would welcome any advice on how long you continued pumping, from moms who have nursed for at least 2 years and have been separated from their baby for work or school.

Munchkin is 4 today. If you had told me when she was born that she would still be nursing now, I wouldn’t have believed it. My original goal with her was to nurse for 6 months, yet here we are. My goal now is for child led weaning.

Some people view child led weaning as meaning that the child has full access to nursing any time she wants it, and that mom never says “no”. This is not the case for us. I did night-wean her when she was 2, and I was pregnant with Sweets. I also spot weaned her when I was pregnant to cut down on how often she nursed. And since she turned 3, I have limited her to only nursing first thing in the morning and/or last thing before bed (the rest of the time, the milk is for Sweets). She continues to nurse once a day most days, typically when she first wakes up in the morning. Sometimes she nurses both in the morning and at bed time, and other days she doesn’t nurse at all. When I say that my goal is child led weaning, I mean that I will let her decide when she is finished with nursing, not that I won’t place any limits on it while she is still nursing.

There have been several occasions when I was convinced that she had weaned. For about 6 months when I was pregnant, she only nursed an average of once per week. Sometimes she skipped as much as two weeks before asking again. I really thought she had weaned more than once, and I thought that she would wean very shortly the whole time. I said to myself “I’m sure she will be weaned by the New Year at this rate” and then “I’m sure she will be weaned by the time the new baby comes,” but that wasn’t the case. When Sweets was born, Munchkin started nursing more again, but after about a week, she told me that she didn’t want to nurse anymore because it made her “feel sick”. I thought for sure she was weaned that time. But a week later she asked again, and she’s been pretty steady ever since. She will still skip a few days if we have house guests or if we are traveling because she gets distracted, but once we are back in our routine, she is ready to nurse again.

Lately, I have started talking to her about weaning. I have told her that one day she will be weaned, and that means that she won’t want to drink Mommy’s Milk anymore. She seems to think that is pretty silly, and that of course she will always want to drink Mommy’s Milk! But I see a few signs that she’s considering that some day she will actually wean. Since her birthday was coming up, I asked Munchkin if she thought she might wean when she is four. She told me, “Well, maybe when I’m 55.” I guess that’s progress!

I took my first course in Immunology when I was a junior in college. I remember learning about the immunities in breast milk, and I knew then that I would breastfeed my kids. I guess I had always known that my mom breastfed me, and I thought that I would do it too, but the knowledge from that immunology class really solidified it for me. It was important.

When I was pregnant with Munchkin, I knew I wanted to breastfeed for at least 6 months. I arranged with my boss that I would take my 12 weeks of FMLA unpaid and then come back to work part-time for the next 3 months by using my vacation leave for 4 hours each day. I didn’t want to come back to work full-time until Munchkin was 6 months old, specifically because I wanted to make sure that I could breastfeed that long. I knew that my mother had weaned me at 7 months when she went back to school, and I had the idea that it was nearly impossible to keep up breastfeeding while being separated from your baby during the day.

By the time my maternity leave was over, I decided that I would continue breastfeeding even after 6 months, and that if I needed to supplement with formula while Munchkin was at daycare, I could still breastfeed at home and pump as much as I could at work. My goal soon became to breastfeed until 12 months, with formula supplementation after 6 months if necessary. Within a few more months, my goal was to nurse until at least 12 months without using formula. And by the time 12 months came, my goal had changed again to nursing until at least 2 years old! Two years came and went, and now my goal with Munchkin is child-led weaning.

When Sweets was born, things were so much simpler. My goal with her is simply child-led weaning after a minimum of 2 years. Actually, I have upgraded my terminology – I now say that it is my priority (as opposed to my goal) to nurse Sweet for a minimum of 2 years.

Today my Sweets is one year old! That puts us into the category of what many people refer to as “extended” nursing now. “Extended” I guess, because many people in our culture think that 12 months is the time to wean, if you haven’t already. Others prefer terminology like “full term nursing” or “natural weaning” – terms that emphasize that biologically, humans are meant to breastfeed longer than just one year. I have heard several misconceptions about “extended” nursing that I would like to discuss here.

Shouldn’t a baby that age be able to drink from a cup? Shouldn’t that baby be eating solid food by now? I don’t want to have to go to his school and nurse him at recess.
Breastfed babies learn to drink from a cup and eat solid food the same way that formula-fed babies do. The frequency of nursing gradually decreases with age so that she is getting less of her nutrition through breast milk as she gets older. My babies started eating other foods at about 6 months old, and learning how to use a cup at around 12 months old, just like most other babies. Munchkin is still nursing, but only about once per day. The rest of the time she eats table food, drinks from a cup, and goes to daycare and other activities without me.

I weaned at one year because that’s how long the AAP says to breastfeed.
The AAP actually says “Breastfeeding should be continued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutually desired by mother and child.” One year is the minimum recommended, not the maximum. The WHO recommends breastfeeding for a minimum of two years.

After one year, there aren’t any nutritional benefits to breast milk. After one year, cow’s milk is more nutritious than breast milk.
Human milk is specially made for human babies. Cow’s milk is specially made for baby cows. It’s a fact that is so obvious to me that I sometimes forget it is not obvious to others. If you believe that a child needs milk nutritionally, then you must see that cow’s milk is a substitute for breast milk, not the preferred nutritional source. At one year, a baby can tolerate cow’s milk, but that does not make cow’s milk the preferred choice. Cow’s milk is an adequate substitute for human milk when human milk is not available for some reason, but human milk is still the default and top choice for human babies (and toddlers!).

After one year, there aren’t any immune benefits to breast milk.
A child will continue to get antibodies in breast milk for as long as he is still nursing. In fact, the antibodies and other immunities become more concentrated in the breast milk to make up for the decreased frequency of nursing. In addition, some studies have shown health benefits to both mother (breast cancer) and child (leukemia, overweight, allergy) to be dose-dependent, meaning that longer breastfeeding leads to greater benefit.

After a year, babies don’t need breast milk anymore.

Well, to take it literally, I guess no child really “NEEDS” breast milk at all. After all, plenty survive on formula from day one right? And yet, most of us try to give our children more than just the bare minimum that they “NEED” to survive. Just as breast milk is superior to formula as a food for infants, it is also superior to cow’s milk for toddlers.

When a child is old enough to ask/walk/talk/have teeth, he is too old to nurse.
The only reason I can think of why someone would link the ability to ask with age appropriateness of nursing is that they associate nursing only with young babies, which of course is just a cultural bias rather than a biological indicator of readiness. The actual act of asking for something can’t possibly have anything to do with not giving it to them – you don’t say “if he’s old enough to ask for juice (or whatever) then he’s too old to drink it” because it makes no sense. What you are really reacting to here is just your perception of “what babies do” and talking/asking is apparently your cutoff between babyhood and toddlerhood. It’s similar to when others say that when he can walk he’s too old. There is no actual link between walking and nursing. You could say “when he can walk/talk/whatever, he’s too old to sleep in a crib?” After all cribs are for babies, yet many folks keep their toddlers in cribs too and nobody gives it a second thought. It makes no sense though because these things actually have nothing to do with each other!

The emergence of teeth at least makes a little more sense when discussing weaning age, however it is obvious that an infant with a few teeth would not be able to survive without milk, therefore the emergence of first teeth is also not a good biological indicator. A better indication if you wanted to use teeth could be a complete set of teeth, which may happen around 2 years old, or even the emergence of adult teeth (more like 5 years old).