When my son was a few months old and my dear, dear friend Anastasia was at the end of her pregnancy, she turned to me one day and said, "I have a request."
"Anything," I said. After all, she had come over two or three times a week since my baby was born to help me as I finished a book. She'd done everything from returning phone calls to burping the baby to vacuuming. When she tipped over in the course of trying to rock my son, Skuli, she bonked her head rather than drop him, prompting me to wonder if it was fair to relegate administrative tasks and baby-care to a woman who was nine months pregnant.
"I want us to nurse each other's babies," Anastasia said.
"Okay," I said, immediately.
"They'll be milk-siblings," she said excitedly.
"Yeah," I said. "Wow."
What I didn't do was yell, "OMIGOD! THAT IS SO BIZARRE THAT YOU WANT TO DO THAT!" But that was my first internal reaction. Second internal reaction: how am I going to get out of this when I already said okay?
Read the rest of the story here.Jennifer winds up researching the practice and then giving it a shot. She finds it to be not so weird after all.
The New York Daily News picked up the story and many bloggers freaked out about it and said all kinds of awful things about her. (You won't do that, right?)
Now, we're hearing more and more anecdotal mentions of the practice. For example, just this week author Arthur Bradford blogged that his wife had nursed her sister's baby.
And as taboo as it is, it really makes sense that it would be emerging as a trend right now: there's so much pressure on new mothers today to exclusively breast-feed that a whole industry for out-sourcing the job has emerged.
When we were talking to our pediatrician about milk supply, he joked that some women made just enough milk, while others made enough milk to "bottle it and sell it at Whole Foods." Turns out, now some women are doing almost that. The Washington Post reports on several new milk-sharing trends, including "milk banks."
So, what do you think about wet-nursing or "cross-nursing" or purchased milk? Do you know anyone who's done it? Is a good way for babies to get breast milk even when their mothers can't provide it? Or should a baby only drink his own mother's milk?
Every Friday, we'll post about a new parenting controversy. Last week: Should you tell a stranger her child has autism? Next week: Why are so many parents choosing not to vaccinate their kids?
Reader Comments ( Page 10 of 10)
136. I breast fed my cousins baby once when he cries pitifully for an hour. I had nursed my own baby a few months older and that look of need, sadness and loneliness was all over his face. I didn't know what to do, I could not get a hold of her and he was really hungry and tired. I felt we were close enough so I nursed him till he fell asleep. I couldn't bring myself to tell her right away so I waited. Then one day I couldn't stand it, maybe a year later and we were in one of those close sister talks and I told her that I had nursed her baby. She looked surprised, I thought here it comes and she said, “Well I knew that all along.” Somehow she thought I knew she knew. She didn’t think it was a big deal. And she was glad I had done it. I was very relieved but wish it had been out in the open from the beginning.
If I couldn't nurse my next baby I would hope that anyone would be willing to help me and I would be glad to help another woman who needed or wanted someone to help nurse her baby.
Rose at 11:34PM on Sep 22nd 2007
137. My daughter and my sister's daughter are 6 months apart, and we both returned to work soon after having them, and then we would babysit for each other, so it was only natural for us both to nurse them as needed. Her daughter was introduced to it younger, so she was a little more open to it. My Maddie was more possessive of me, and would only go to my sister when she was at the end of her rope.
I felt that it really brought the four of us very close together. It also made our lives easier, and prevented us from the guilt we might have had switching to bottles earlier. There was nothing disgusting or bothersome about it (unless my sister at spaghetti or onions and then nursed my overly sensitive girl!), and the girls certainly knew who their mother was, in spite of the sharing. One of my favorite memories will always be having a girl at each breast as they played with each other's hands.
Really, when you are willing to hold someone's little life in your hands and give them sustenance, it can only be a good thing. Today's children can have worse things happen to them then to be held close, fed, and coddled by someone who loves them enough to share their milk with them.
Alisha at 12:22PM on Sep 24th 2007
138. [[Why risk you're babies life/health. I would not recommend this to anyone in today's society. It is way too risky.
]]
By that logic, you wouldn't have a baby in the first place because you don't absolutely KNOW that your husband didn't cheat on you and that he doesn't have AIDS. Therefore you would never have unprotected sex with him, which is usually necessary in order to get pregnant. Let's face it, many women have a closer relationship and greater trust with a sister or best friend than they do with their own husband. You KNOW if your best friend is living a prudent lifestyle. You KNOW if she is at all likely to risk her own baby's health by any sort of risky behavior. There is no need to be paranoid, but then, it seems to be the American way nowadays. For instance, most parents are semi hysterical about the possibility of their child being kidnapped by a stranger--even though there are only about 100 such incidents per year, in a nation of nearly 300 million! You do the math. Why do we worry about the most remote, ridiculous things, while ignoring REAL dangers like the lack of exercise that results when we keep the kids in the house, say?
OomYaaqub at 7:40PM on Sep 23rd 2007
139. [[I just cannot agree with women letting other women breastfeed their children when there are so many other options, pumping for example.]]
Pumping is painful, very expensive because you have to buy or rent the pump, doesn't work for all women, and, well, it's grotesque. After all, we are not cows. How can you possibly put a MACHINE to your nipples? At least nursing a friend's baby is NORMAL, because nipples were meant to feed babies. If we didn't buy into the sexualization of breasts, this wouldn't even be an issue. If you would change your friend's baby's diaper, why is this somehow worse?
OomYaaqub at 7:47PM on Sep 23rd 2007
140. "IMO the feeling you get in your vagina when you nurse is sexual. It's the same place where you feel it when you have sex with your pardner. Maybe these women are not getting it in the "right" arena and have discovered an acceptable subsitute place, their babies. Now they want to have it with OTHER people's babies. It doesn't seem right AT ALL."
Hmm, sounds like you're nursing your baby in the wrong place. :D
Seriously, though, are you saying that mothers have sexual feelings for their infants? THAT'S weird and gross to me, a lot more so than the idea of nursing someone else's baby. And I think your comment illustrates a possible reason why a lot of Americans today find this idea so weird: we seem to associate nursing a baby with sex, and associate that someone nursing a baby that's not theirs with infidelity.
Babies and mothers bond while nursing, I'm sure, but that's true to some extent of all time spent together. I don't think having someone else nurse your baby would be any worse than having someone else give your baby formula (as far as the emotional ramifications). As if your baby bonding with someone else was always a bad thing! Don't you want your baby to have a good relationship with its aunts, grandmother, babysitter, etc.? It would be bad if they thought of that other person as their mother, but from all that I've ever heard about wet nurses, etc. that doesn't happen unless the wet nurse is the primary caregiver. (As happened with nobility centuries ago.) And I think that it could help, given what we know about antibodies transmitted in milk. You've got to be careful about diseases, drugs, etc, but as Oom Yaqub pointed out, many women have a better relationship with their sisters and best friends than their husbands.
closetpuritan at 6:55AM on Sep 25th 2007
141. Glassyrinx said: "We've traditionally been so squeamish about our own bodies and each others' that this wierdness about not showing our nipples to an infant not biologically related to us nor allowing our child to drink "alien" milk would just make sense.
La Leche League has been around for a long time. It's time people gave them their due."
Just for the record, LLL does not endorse nursing other's babies, only one's own child(ren) for the reason stated below:
Danisha said: "Breast feeding is supposed to not only give your child a healthy feeding but it is also a time when the mother and child bond together. I wouldn't want anybody bonding with my child but me."
Iclectblue at 10:39AM on Sep 26th 2007
142. hiv can be transmitted thru breast milk
GAIL at 7:06PM on Sep 26th 2007
143. It's absolutely great! Only in Puritanical, weird and totally messed up America would this even be a "controversy." God made bodies. The absurdity of being "modest" and having a problem with nudity, bodily functions, or the beauty of the natural ways bodies work is more Western Christian garbage, and hasn't ever existed in the Orthodox Church. These people REALLY need to get a life!
Father John at 2:28AM on Sep 27th 2007
144. no, breastfeeding is about a mother providing for her child, your child needs to form this bond with you (smelling you and feeling you) If the child is smelling and feeling someone else it will casue confusion, it is also nasty, really nasty. Are we talking about sucking from another woman's breast? If so, Icannot even believe that this is becoming a question of can we or can't we! How nasty, I really hope it is not.
jennifer at 4:52PM on Sep 27th 2007
145. (lindaelise - breastfeeding needs to be reined in as well, to the extent that its not kept private. . . .maybe the problem isn't America, its the over zealous breastfeeding mom. . . .We don't need this anymore!)
What exactly is it that we don't need anymore? Health? Respect? I breastfed my daughter for over nine months. Newborns need to be nursed every 3-4 hours. The feeding alone can take an hour. I didn't have the luxury of living in the city, a five minute walk to the grocery store. Every time I had to go for a post partum checkup or the baby's checkups or buy groceries, it was an all day endeavor, with an hour to an hour and a half drive each way, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my daughter starve for 6 hours so I don't offend someone who can stare at near-porn tv shows all night but scoffs when I feed my child food that is biologically specific to her needs without shutting myself in a filthy public bathroom. Cows milk was designed for cows, who have FOUR stomachs to digest it. Incase you missed that day in biology class, humans only have one.
picky mom at 6:52AM on Sep 28th 2007
146. Sounds like a good idea to me. The immunities from the mother are passed along to the child through antibodies in breast milk. I would think that a child nursed by a few women would have more antibodies and be more healthy than a child nursed by only one mom. More than one kid at the breast, no biggie. As long as the dads don't want in on it.
Kathy Canuel at 11:29AM on Sep 28th 2007