Two years of breastfeeding - is it worth it?

'IF ANYBODY had said to me, 'You're going to breastfeed your child until she's three,' when I had my first baby I would've just fallen on the floor." But, says Anna Burbidge, whose six children are now grown up, and who has worked with breastfeeding campaign group La Leche League for 30 years, ended up breastfeeding all six for at least two years.

For her, successful breastfeeding is about giving women all the information that they need, and the support to make sure that they can do it: "When you've got a newborn baby it's overwhelming and breastfeeding is not always easy in the first few days and weeks. If you're told you've got to breastfeed for two years it could be overwhelming, but the important thing is to take it one day at a time."

The question of how long babies should be breastfed crops up on a regular basis, often when some poor woman is asked to leave a public building because she's – shock, horror! – feeding her baby. Now the issue is again being debated as NHS Health Scotland is to issue a DVD to all pregnant women which includes the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation that babies are breastfed until they're two. Those behind the DVD say it's an international guideline – the WHO Europe suggests exclusive breastfeeding to the age of six months is desirable, with continued breastfeeding for as long as mothers want to.

However, there are concerns that the DVD's message will be seen as a government rule that women will be forced to keep their children clamped to their breasts for years, whether they want to or not?

Conservative health spokeswoman Mary Scanlon says information about breastfeeding is all to the good, but the choice about how long to breastfeed has to be the mother's alone: "My fear is that women would be expected to breastfeed for two years, I actually think that could be damaging. I'd rather we concentrated on up to six months as a more realistic goal."

Rowan MacGregor, 31, a choreographer and dance teacher, breastfed her daughter Emily, who is now 18 months, for six months until she went back to work part-time. "I had a quite an easy time and it was definitely a really positive thing to do," MacGregor says. "But I went back to work quite quickly and just trying to keep up with it was impossible really – getting up at 5am to express milk so there's be enough for her when you were out at work. I also felt that by six months (it was enough] when she was eating solid food anyway. And she was just too hungry, I couldn't keep up with her."

For MacGregor, six months made sense in terms of the benefits of breastmilk for Emily, but it also felt natural to her to stop then. "I'd reached the end of the line with it, I was ready to stop. I don't think that if I'd heard that I should be doing it for two years that it would've changed anything for me."

Ann Kerr of NHS Health Scotland says that the DVD is about information and support, and not about setting an expectation that all women will want to breastfeed their babies until they're toddlers: "We do want more people to have a go, but equally if you're going to do that you need to be supported."

Linda Thompson, 35, a charity resource and development worker who lives in the east end of Glasgow had her daughter, Caoimha, in April 2007. She had read the books and the information leaflets, she had a plan and she assumed that she'd breastfeed.

But it wasn't as easy as she'd hoped. "I thought, 'It's totally natural, everybody can do it,' so I just assumed that I would," she says. "Once Caoimha was born it was difficult, there's no denying it. (Even] having read the booklets you don't really grasp what it's going to be like. It was a real shock to the system."

Breastfeeding is good for both mothers and babies – it has been linked to lower rates of breast and ovarian cancer in women, and boosts babies' immune systems, protecting them from infections and helping their digestive system to develop. It may, according to recent research, even make them smarter.

But although breast may well be best, Scotland's breastfeeding rate has remained relatively static since 2001. After six to eight weeks, the overall breastfeeding rate was 36 per cent in 2007, but only 26.4 per cent of mothers were exclusively breastfeeding. NHS Health Scotland has a target to improve that figure to 32.7 per cent by 2010-11.

Linda Thompson's daughter is now 14 months old. Thompson is back at work but is still breastfeeding in the morning before she leaves and as and when after she gets home.

"My view right from day one was not to set myself a deadline because it's really intimidating at the start," she says. "You read all this information that says you must make it to six months, or two years and if people can that's fantastic but I just took the view that I'd take it one day at a time.

"At first I certainly had the wrong impression that if I started breastfeeding I had to continue. Now I realise at least if I started I could stop at any time, whereas if I didn't start I wasn't going to be able to go back."

As well as having support from her partner, Fraser, Thompson joined a breastfeeding support group, and that is, she says, what got her through.

"For the first few weeks I wouldn't feed out in public. I was so worried about other people's reactions. But do you know what, I've never had a negative reaction. It wasn't until I went to the group that I felt comfortable and confident enough to breastfeed in front of other people. As soon as that happened, my God, I breastfed at music festivals, I breastfed in parks."

Thompson is still breastfeeding Caoimha. Far from it being a chore to fit in around working, it gives her "special bonding time" with her daughter and a chance to sit down for a while.

"A happy mum is a happy baby," she says. "People shouldn't be made to feel guilty but they should have the support to try breastfeeding if they want to, or if they're not able to there needs to be support to help them deal with that.

"It's an individual's choice and they have to be able to work out what's best for them, what's best for their baby and what's best for their family."