Apparently, more and more women are nursing each other’s babies, a practice called Cross-Nursing.I think that it’s just not been our social norm,” said Morgan McFarland, who has been breast-feeding her friend Sarah Griffith’s son since he was just 3 months old. “In some cultures, it is, and you would think nothing of, you know, nursing your neighbor’s child if something happened, or nursing your sister’s baby if she has to go to work.”
Breast feeding is an intimate, bonding act between Mother and Child. Why would anyone want to share that with another woman?
Are there Health Risks?
There is little to no data on long term outcomes for infants fed with breast milk from someone other than their own mother. One should not assume the benefits are the same as for infants fed with mom’s milk.
Breast milk contains antibodies unique to Mom and shared to some extent genetically with her child, not to mention growth factors and other proteins. What are the impacts of exposing a child to these proteins from an unrelated individual? No one knows.
More concerning for me is that infections such as TB, HIV and hepatitis can be transmitted via breast milk. In addition, medications taken by the nursing woman also find their way into breast milk.
So if you are going to share your child with another woman, you better be pretty darned sure she is free of infection and not taking any medications that could harm your child. I for one would not be willing to take that risk with my child.
Bottom Line
I see no reason why, in today’s society, a nursing mother needs to share nursing with anyone. There are potentially serious risks and no proven benefits.
If you want community and convenience, then join your neighborhood food coop.
(Okay, Commenters, let loose…)
I can only respond with humor…
To the tune of “Try a Little Tenderness”
with apologies to Otis Redding
Oh you may be weary
New moms do get weary
Waiting for a chance to rest
But when you get weary
Try someone else’s breast
You know baby’s waiting
Just anticipating
The one thing that only you possess
But if you’re without milk
Try someone else’s breast
It could be a sister or a cousin
Someone willing to share
But make sure they have been tested
You don’t want a hepatitis scare
You won’t regret it
And baby will forget it
Cause milk is their whole happiness
And it’s so easy
Just try someone else’s breast
– OBS Housekeeper
Oh how I am looking forward to the wrath of the La Leche League coming at you for this one.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
I witnessed my kids nurse from my wife for 4-5 months each. It was wonderful for both my wife and the kids. What was most wonderful was how comforted the babies were with my wife. They could hear her heartbeat, smell her smells and feel her warmth. It was really great.
It was also obvious at the 4 to 6 month time that the babies were not as comforted by JUST her nursing, and that a bottle of formula also provided the comfort when they were being held and nurtured. In other words, time to move on…
To me, allowing someone else to provide this level of intimacy is outsourcing your child’s sense of security. Why on earth would anyone allow this kind of intimate act to occur with their child?
To quote Janeane Garofalo’s Abby in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, she said “We can love our pets, we just can’t LOVE our pets.” Same holds true for our kids and wet nurses in my book.
In addition, if the mother is completely insistent that breast milk is the right choice for their child, why not pump and freeze? It’s a good viable option…
I would love to see a blog post on toddlers and children who are maintained on breast milk beyond infancy. It just freaks me out when a 4 year old can articulate that they need a drink from mommy.
I have a neighbor, a chiropractor that has no beliefs in western traditional medicine, who breast fed her son until he was 4. She had no intention of stopping, but did when the tumor in her breast was so large she couldn’t move her arm without a LOT of pain. When she finally got to the doctor, who had prescribed 2 (TWO) mamographies (sp?) for her in the previous 18 months, he asked why she didn’t feel the lumps and do something about it. Her response was that the lumps are really from nursing, that they weren’t tumors and that the milk is great for her toddler. She was stage 4 at the time. She eventually embraced some western medicine and is in remission.
To me the entire topic shows a serious lack of perspective, and the kind of “helicopter parenting” that will eventually lead these kids down the path of extreme entitlement. “Nothing is too good for my baby” kind of thinking leads to trouble in my experience.
Last thought, I would love to see a poll of the crowd of folks that participate in this to find out how many of the mothers saved the placenta at birth, froze it, and consumed it to boost the immune system. Same mindset, equally gross.
I agree with you and the previous commentors. Another concern would be the diet, drugs, alcohol that the mother’s substitute would ingest. Who monitor’s those things?
OK, I’ll bite.
Except, my post got way too long. I decided to post it on my own blog.
I know no one is surprised this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this.
Fascinating topic. I had no idea this was going on.
My comment/question is that wet nurses were common until the early 20th century, when upper class women often wouldn't nurse for vanity reasons and formula did not exist. I wonder if there are any records that indicate any health related downside to this practice? I would think that there would be some records from the mid to late 19th century at least.
Of course in this day & age there are more prescription (& non-prescription) medications to worry about, but if all parties involved agree to participate and there is no obvious health risk then I see nothing wrong with the practice. Just because it holds a high "ew" factor for many of us westerners does not make it a bad practice.
A few thoughts:
-What do primates do in the wild? What do “primative” human societies do? Sometimes, turning up our noses in middle-class disgust flies in the face of millions of years of evolution.
-What is normal in our industrialized society isn’t necessarily natural.
-As a previous commentator said, wet nursing used to be commonplace, not just for upperclass women, but for any child who’s mother was having difficulty feeding.
-Is it possible that early exposure to a wider variety of antigens when the immune system is naive could help reduce atopy and/or autoimmune disorders?
-It’s perfectly fine to write about the bond between mother and child (which I think is enormously important, btw), but “it takes a village to raise a child.” IMO, the bond a child forms between secondary caregivers is neglected in our rather isolating society. I don’t think that any one mother, however loving or nurturing, can be everything for their child all the time. Why not work to strengthen bonds between a child and other loving/nurturing adults who can take over during those times when Mom doesn’t have it in her? And lets face it, this is in perfect conditions. There are many, many mothers out there who obviously don’t have what it takes to nurture their children. Why not expand the nuturing circle.
-You do have a valid point about disease.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post!
Thanks all for your comments (and to OBS, for another hilariously brilliant song!)
Just one comment on the past practices of wet nursing and such. These were entirely necessary in the time they were practiced, since infants would die without breastfeeding (no formula, no refrigeration or breast pumps.)In a risk benefit calcuation, benefit won. Overwhelmingly.
But these curcumstances do not exist today. So, take a breastfed child whose mom is going out to the store and who needs to be fed. Mom can put breastmilk in the freezer or use formula. What is the benefit, then, of cross-nursing, other than convenience? If I tried to sell you an infant formula that was for all intents and purposes the same as breast milk, but told you there was even a one in a million chance that your infant would get HIV or TB or Hepatitis from it, would you ever even consider using it? Of course not.
Finally, take an infant today whose mom can’t breastfeed for medical reasons, or god forbid, dies. Now weigh the risk of using formula against the risk of wet nursing. A toughter choice, since the benefits of breast milk that is not Mom’s is not entrirely clear. On the risk side, however, one can diminish the risks, by screening the nursing woman for infection and knowing that she is not taking any meds that could pass into breast milk. I’d say the risk/benefit calcuation is probably a wash and you can take your choice.
I’d encourage you all to go read Hilary’s post – it is an excellent sum up of a discussion by a group of women on cross-nursing.
Schruggling – Agree – I can’t imagine sharing my child with another woman this way. But I guess that’s where I an the cross-nursing mom’s part ways.
La Leche actually came spot on in this one, giving good info on the health risks and recommending screened breastmilk banks rather than cross-nursing.
Schruggling, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breast feeding until one year, with six months of it exclusive, and the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for two years, minimum. Your estimates of when it is time to move on are not in a agreement with most medical research.
I don’t agree that having a baby “ask” for it makes it gross in some way. Babies ask to be fed from the first day they are born. Learning language skills varies from child to child, and if they learn a name for it in sign language or in “real” language, it really has nothing to do with their nutritional needs.
Analysis of teeth eruption and weaning in other mammals would estimate that humans should breastfeed until about the age of four to be consistent. There are a lot of things to consider other than who decides it makes them feel icky or when the child learns a word or when the child seems “comforted” (??) by formula.
I would trust most of my friends to be honest with me about their health, and that they don’t have TB and haven’t just smoked some crack or whatever.
And there are milk donation banks where nursing moms can donate extra milk for babies in the ER.
It really doesn’t seem that strange to me; I’d breastfeed someone else’s baby and feel honored to be asked; I’d be okay asking my friends to feed my baby as well.
I really don’t see what the big deal is there. Pretty much anyone I’d french kiss, I’d let breastfeed my kid.
I wouldn’t breastfeed someone else’s baby without asking – IMHO that would be non consensual and unethical.
Okay, I’m a total breastfeeding advocate. I nursed my oldest until 3 and am now nursing my 1 year old. But I don’t think that I would go to a person for breastmilk if something happened and I couldn’t do it. The whole issue of what they have been putting in their bodies would be too much for me.
Schruggling: My oldest was pretty much kept up on breastmilk until 2 because he wouldn’t eat very much food until then. He never had any problems with growth or smarts or anything.
The limited references I’ve seen in literature to nursemaids implies that the nursemaid was the only source of milk for the child. Any weird effects or dangers in the notion of mixing antibodies, etc from different women hasn’t been mentioned here. Are there any?
— thirsty Andy
Andy – Actually, I raised the same question in my post, but I have no idea as to the answer.
Thanks for reading!
For some reason, the idea gives me the willies. I find that some folks are so adamant that only breast milk should be used that they go to these extremes. It just seems odd.
My mother and her best friend did this in the 40s. When the girl in question and I found out it totally grossed us out. Somethings are best kept from 8th graders.
Gosh, and here I thought I was a pretty decent sister for dogsitting. Breast feeding someone else’s kid raises the stakes a whole lot.
I am about to adopt a newborn and can’t nurse (due to cancer). I am very confused over the recommendations out there. Is it safe for me to buy breastmilk? Is it better than formula, and if so, how? And how can I find another woman to breastfeed my baby?
My baby is coming from the county and was taken away from her drug addict mother because she was born exposed to drugs. So mom nursing is not an option.
Thanks.
OK, so I may not be a proponent of this, but go to the following article…I had to link it.
🙂
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_fe_st/odd_adopted_tigers
Anonymous –
LA Leche has lots of info on breastfeeding for adoptive moms – here it is. Congratulations!
http://www.llli.org/NB/NBadoptive.html
Schruggling –
Very cute!
I can’t imagine actually nursing someone else’s child, or handing mine over to someone else.
That said, when my kid was about 6 weeks old and I was pumping ALL THE TIME with a hospital grade pump, my sister – who was also nursing – was with me and without her child. She availed herself of the pump to relieve pressure. We were decidedly amused to discover that her milk was green. It went into the fridge, and the next day I fed it to my child. But it was my sister. And it was sort of funny.