Yes, Virginia, there really are wet nurses.

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Taking advantage of the glorious weather, Neighbor and I took the boys to the zoo today.

As I have never dealt with the biological conditions associated with child bearing, I appreciate Neighbor's candor and tolerance of all my many, many questions. Today the topic turned to breast feeding.

During the course of the conversation Neighbor mentioned that her sisiter had been encouraged to be a wet nurse since she was such a good lactater (is that the word?).

I was floored! Wet nurses!? People still do that?

Apparently they do.

A quick google seach had many results, including this:

Quote:

The Web site for Certified Household Staffing appears like a throwback to Victorian times, when the moneyed classes hired teams of servants. The site sports images of butlers with bow ties, nannies in black and white uniforms and gamekeepers dressed in tweeds. But the agency offers another service associated with times long past: wet nurses.

Robert Feinstock, 65, the owner of the Beverly Hills, Calif., company, believes his business is one of the few in the United States that offers wet nurses, or women who suckle other peoples' children. He says he provides a needed service to mothers who want their children to thrive on breast milk but for whatever reason are unable to perform the task themselves.

"The mother recognizes the need for her baby to experience the close bond that arises when a baby suckles on a woman's breast," he says.

Feinstock says the majority of his clients are women who have undergone cosmetic breast augmentation, which impairs their ability to breast-feed. According to the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, women with breast implants are three times more likely to have inadequate milk supply when trying to breast-feed.

Breast milk is widely believed to bolster the immune system and reduce the incidence of illnesses like meningitis, pneumonia and leukemia. Some breast milk proponents believe that breast-fed children are happier and more intelligent than bottle-fed babies.

Child experts, however, have warned that using a wet nurse can lead to infection and psychological damage......

Read all about it: http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/cns/2004-03-15/525.asp

What do you think about this?

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I just realized that I was probably inviting a lot of our would be pornographers in with the title of this thread.

Please note, perverts, this is in the parenting and childcare category.

Go start your own thread about wet nurses.

Thank you.

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Huh.

I know there is a device created for adoptive mothers of infants that has some sort of receptacle for donor breastmilk and then a thin tube that ends up at the nipple, and then the baby can suckle from the adoptive mother's breast that way, (and sometimes stimulate milk production even though she didn't give birth to the infant).

I'm a little more comfortable with that, I think. Nursing was such an intensive bonding process, I'd feel very strange about leasing that out to another woman. It's not just the nourishment per se, it's the eye contact (a newborn's range of focus is just about exactly boob-to-mom's-eyes distance), it's the skin-to-skin contact, it's all kinds of things.

I remember reading somewhere -- maybe here or another parenting forum -- about a woman who, as an adult, ran into a stranger and was strongly drawn to her in a way that mystefied her. They talked, and stranger turned out to have been her wet nurse, some 30 years ago.

I do think that breast milk, as a substance, absolutely rocks.

Hmmm...

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Weird, huh?

I was surprised to see the boob-job mom stuff. According to Neighbor, when her sister was asked it was more in terms of children that were somehow deprived of their mothers: kids whose mom's were in prison, kids whose moms were sick, kids whose mom's died, kids who were abandoned.

Breast milk is so beneficial that these kids deserve a break, healthwise too, but somehow I have a hard time wrapping my mind around wet nursing.

Having dealt with some separation issues I can understand how breaking such a bond might create havoc.

For the first time ever I'm kind of glad Mo's mom didn't breast feed although it made me insane that she wouldn't.

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Yeah.

I know that there are donor banks of breastmilk just like blood banks -- that, lovingly provided via bottle by a hopefully permanent caretaker, is a little less weird to me than the wet nurse idea.

Maybe it's silly that I get weirded out by it, I dunno. My cousin and I were nursing at the same time while living in the same house and when my mom babysat, she'd occasionally feed us twin-style. We all have lifelong bonds, though.

If Mo's biomom wouldn't breastfeed, as opposed to couldn't, that sounds like it's of a piece with her eventual decisions. Sigh.

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Yeah, soz..... Mo's mom wouldn't even try it. I can't speak for her but she seemed to find it somehow..... disgusting?..... repressive?...... degrading?.....

I know exactly what you mean about the weirdness of it. I was really flipped out when she started talking about it. Luckily, Neighbor is also Friend and knows that I'm a complete doofus on baby stuff.

Then I was amazed when I googled it and it wasn't all historical information. Still, it doesn't seem to be much talked about, does it?

As with most things, I'm really fence sitting on this. It seems eye-popping weird but it really makes a lot of sense but then again it makes not so much sense at all but on the other hand (ummm.... this must be what... my forth hand?...) it seems kind of stupid not to take advantage of it.

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Oh! And wait!

I'm just thinking back to the stuff I posted about that little girl who was starved by her adoptive family and all of that "essential witness" stuff -- stuff about having created some kind of bond in their life which made it more probably that they would be able to bond at a later date.

Do you remember that?

Could it be possible that a wet nurse could be an "essential witness" to a child deprived of their mother!?

Where's dlowan? We need to get her input on this.

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That's a good point. I'd think it could be done with a bottle and love, but that's interesting.

I wonder how money would figure into that, though? The thing you linked to seems to indicate that it is a service that needs to be paid for, and with the clientele (augmented moms) it's probably rather pricey. I wonder, if we assume money is involved, whether some other form of bonding would be more possible/ cost-efficient? Because it seems like many of situations where this is most an issue are situations in which there isn't much money to go around...

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The profit motive!

Interesting.

I would imagine a Beverly Hills wet nurse makes good cash.

I would imagine that the other situations are volunteer - like the hospital "grandmas" who knit caps and rock babies.

The whole concept that this practice still exists left me so slack-jawed that I'm afraid I didn't know what kind of questions to ask.

Neighbor might not have been able to answer them anyway.

But boy-o-boy, if I ever meet Sister....

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I really appreciate you joining me in this discussion, soz, otherwise I'd think I was some kind of nut-job.

I was so dumbfounded by this discovery that I thought everyone else would be too.

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It's a weird one. I knew it existed, I think, and had several discussions about it that must've been on a parenting forum I used to frequent as I can't think of anyone here or on Abuzz that was involved. The anecdote from the poster who said she recognized this woman from her smell 30 years on really stuck with me, the depth of bonding that happens, and how uncomfortable I'd be with anyone else doing that kind of bonding with MY baby.

Maybe that's silly and selfish of me, though. It takes a village, and all that.

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Oh my!!!

Whoodathunk.

Personally, I love the idea of sharing breastmilk with mums who cannot breastfeed, because it IS so good for bubs...it is the colostrum, though, I believe, which has the major antibody benefit, and I imagine you cannot get that for your babe unless you supply it yourself.

If it were my babe, I would bottle feed someone else's breast milk, rather than have another woman nurse my babe, because of all the intimacy and bonding that happens at feeding time. I would want my babe to have that with me, or at least with someone wo was going to hang around and be part of their life consistently for some time. I wouldn't want to have a babe of mine running into a wet nurse later and not knowing who the hell she was. There would have to be baby grief at losing such a person.

I do wonder, though, if that is my hang up? If a baby has enough great experiences with you is it fine for it to have some special great experiences with some other woman, too?

I am having this puritanical "good grief" about women who have breast augmentations, and then can't feed, too.

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Kids should definitely get the benefit of breastmilk if at all possible.

Not quite sure what my opinion is on wet nurses.

I believe that selling breastmilk can be quite lucrative.

Sharing the "good grief" moment, but then I think that the baby should have to be deprived of breastmilk just because its momma wanted novelty breasts.

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Hi dlowan and DrewDad, thanks for joining in with your "good griefs"!

It really is a hard question to wrap your mind around. There are so many physical and mental health issues involved involved with breast feeding.

My brother's mother died in childbirth so he never had the benefit of breast feeding. This would have in in 1954 or so. Formula couldn't have been too great back then. My brother is very physically healthy and mentally healthy.

Mo's mom refused to breast feed despite the fact that Mo was such a terribly sickly baby. He's had a few bonding issues.

I suppose circumstance and necessity have a lot to do with outcome, even with a baby.

Both could have probably benefitted from a wet nurse but the practice has such a weird aura.

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somewhere along the line, our society steered boobs to SEX first .. baby .. second.
Confused

I hate that stand point.
but , thats another tangent indeed.

I knew that wet nurses actualy NURSED babies. But I thought, it was only in desperate situations..
orphans, jailed mothers, ICU babies etc.

Im with the majority here..
I would bottle feed mothers milk if it wasnt coming from my boobs.

There IS a bottle that women can strap to their bra clasp, or to the back of the chair they are sitting in , that brings already pumped milk down a tube that is tapped above the nipple so a baby can " breast feed" when the momma has no milk .
I had to use one of those for 3 months before I realized I just wasnt going to get my milk back.

handiest little things! I tell ya..

I had also signed up to donate breast milk.
What happens.. and I believe that a wet nurse has this option as well..
The hospital , or bank gives you a mechanical pump to use. Sealed baggies and tubs to freeze the milk.
Once every 3 days, you bring in the milk you pumped.
This is in turn given to people for babies, used in hospitals etc..

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Interesting discussion. A little story...

My husband is from another country. Once when we were visiting I was introduced to a friend of his mother. I don't speak their language, so they introduced her to me by making a gesture of holding a breast, making sucking sounds, and pointing to my husband. She was his wet nurse, apparently. Through my husband's translation, they told me that they all nurse each other's babies in order for them to all to grow up like brothers and sisters -- that they all nursed from the same breasts so they are all equal. I'm not sure if that translated completely or not, but I thought it interesting.

To me it makes much more sense in a close community situation, much like soz's example and my husband's. I do find it weird in situations where the wet nurse is a stranger. I also have an easier time thinking of it as supplemental nursing rather than primary feeding. Just my 2 cents.

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And we thank you for that, freeduck.

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I'm sure you enjoyed the description of the hand gestures, gus.

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I'm still sweating.

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I think you really hit on it, shewolf, with the sexual component.

I had no idea that donated breast milk was such a commodity. Interesting. There have to be a lot of places, even here in the glorious US of A where such modern miracles aren't readily available.

Fascinating, FreeDuck!

Your story and soz's story make me wonder if perhaps these closed communities aren't on to something. I like the notion of everyone raised as brothers/sisters.

Certainly something to think on....

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Yes, Virginia, there really are wet nurses.

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