Were you breastfed? (Poll)

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Yes.
Stopped at about the age of six months.

Ahaa! Now I remember seeing some article to this effect - so that's why it occurred to me to ask this question.

Wouldn't breastfeeding increase oxytocin levels in both mother and child? Or, conversely, wouldn't not breastfeeding create low oxytocin in the child, and perhaps autism?

This is from http://www.007b.com/breastfeeding_sexual.php :

"Oxytocin has been called the "love hormone" or the "cuddle hormone" or the "bonding hormone". It provides a sense of calm and well being and promotes bonding patterns and creates desire for further contact with the individuals inciting its release. It helps the mother and child to bond together."

"Since it is present during sexual intercourse, it also helps men and women to bond together and form lasting relationships. It makes you want to cuddle, touch, be close, be affectionate towards another human being. Without oxytocin, animals don't recognize or remember their partner though they are able to recognize objects. Autistic children (who often have difficulty with social relationships) have lowered levels of this hormone."

These studies don't really tell us anything about what happens in any one person. Everyone is different. I nursed my babies - for way longer than the average in the US. My son with AS nursed constantly when he was little - practically 24/7. He didn't wean until he was over 2 1/2 years old. He still has AS. He also loved for me to hold and cuddle him. Maybe if he hadn't been nursed, that would have been different - there's no way to know. He did not like it when some (most?) of his pre-school teachers touched him. It may have been the teachers, or it may have been the way they touched him. Again, there's no way to know. He still liked physical contact with me and with his father through elementary school (unless, of course, he was in a mood when he didn't - LOL!). Now, he is an older teen, and such contact is definitely not acceptable, but that is totally age-appropriate. Certainly, the fact that he had to be held in order to nurse, was a positive thing in terms of his learning to tolerate contact from at least one person (me).

I was not breast fed and was born addicted to meth, crack, and black tar heroin. I wonder if that had anything to do with my diagnosis at age 7?

As far as I know I was breastfed but my brother was not. Yet he's the "normal" one.

No. I wasn't even born vaginally, but through a C Section. It always humiliates me when a doctor or someone asks, to say I was born through a C Section.