To be upset that I was not told I was breast fed by my aunt?

[Evieanne]

So in my family’s religion and culture, breast feeding a baby who isn’t yours still forms kinship and re establishes part of who you cannot marry and who you’re allowed alone with from the opposite sex even within family and who can help marry you off.

In my case, as a baby I was Breast fed by my dad’s sister and I became my aunt’s milk daughter and I am the milk sibling to all of her aunt’s children - so my cousins from my aunty, through me being breast fed, became immediate family to me and are just like my biological siblings. so her male children can no longer marry me and can be alone with me and can be my guardian when I marry as they are considered my brothers.

So it is a huge thing in my family’s religion.

It took my parents a while to conceive, and they used a clinic to finally have me. There were concerns as to whether I was biologically both of my parent’s daughter, but they loved me anyway and said they didn’t want to know. My mum breast fed me a couple times just in case I wasn’t biologically hers and kept me bottle fed after that, so I know I am the mahram of her brothers and her dad. My aunt breast fed me when my parents took me to Pakistan as a baby to make sure there was no way I wasn’t blood family to my aunties and uncles on my dad’s side because my parents are related and there was no cheating, they were wanting to protect family ties. I don’t know why they just didn’t do a dna test.

But they kept this from me and I found out because my mum and my aunt had an argument about it and I was told by my mum I couldn’t be alone with any of cousins from my dad’s side unless female and I asked what about the cousins from this aunt who breast fed me, they’re my brothers ffs!!

Op I admit I never heard of milk brothers etc before this thread so my advise may not be very helpful.

I strongly suggest that you have formal counselling or something similar before doing your DNA test. I think you will need a lot of independent support. I am not sure whether specialised services exist or where to seek support but I would seek it. Even if counselling did not work for you before.

I am not overly familiar about DNA tests but you mention your cousins from your Mom's side lived nearby. Would one of them consider also doing a test. It might give you some answers

get all the cries of Ayesha being 9 when she married the Prophet SWT, sexual relations didn’t take place when she was that age and they were married because she was orphaned, so to protect her, the Prophet SWT, married her.

He could have adopted her as a daughter rather than marry her. Or was he intending on marrying every child that needed protection.

So he did have sexual relations with her later? With someone he had known since she was 9??

so my cousins from my aunty, through me being breast fed, became immediate family to me and are just like my biological siblings. so her male children can no longer marry me

It is a really really bad idea to marry cousins. At the end of the day, they carry their Mum's x chromosomes, and that may well be the same X chromosome as your Mum (females have two, one from their Mum,one from their Dad). You don't know which X chromosome your aunt and your Mum passed to their kids. It could be the same one.

This is a really fucking bad idea.

Don't marry a cousin.

There are kids with conditions they shouldn't have because of this insanity.

This strikes me as very unlikely. The complexity of doing a transfer with different embryos genetically simultaneously will be high . I assume there is also a potential issue if those embryos have different blood types. But hey I’m happy to be proved wrong. I had a quick search on line and couldn’t find anything

women in this situation would normally try rounds with their own embryos first . If those were not viable they wouldn’t have been implanted in first place. They will only implant good quality embryos. The procedures are too risky and too expensive to proceed with embryos that are anything than perfect- and even then failure rates remain high. If they can’t harvest any good quality embryos/eggs then they’ll suggest donors. Donating eggs is highly risky - in this country no ethical clinic will take from a women who has yet to complete her own family due to the risks of potential infertility. There is a risk to the donors life form the procedure , while small, it does kill women every year. It is highly intrusive and involves the donor giving herself repeat injections and then lots of visits at specific times to clinic for harvesting. In this country most egg donations are reciprocal donation of “surplus” eggs resulting from ivf thst didn’t need egg donation- potential mothers donating then get money off for donating surplus eggs to some other patient. This way it minimises the risk to women who’d not be having the fertility injections needed in the first place for their own benefits.

whoever told you they took 2 completely genetically different embryo and implanted at same time, is, I suspected, spinning you a yarn. Or they sucked up a yarn told to them by someone else. You need to find out for sure if 2 embryos completely differently genetically have ever been simultaneously implanted.and then take it from there.

Oh and just for the sake of fact, breast feeding someone else baby, directly or not - might mean something in your culture, but it's entirely made up. It doesn't matter who breast fed you, wet nurses used to breast feed kids for their Mums all over the world, it forms no connection. Women donate breast milk to banks for mums who want to use it. It's just milk. There's no significance other than what your culture made up.

Guys, she doesn't want to marry her cousin (it would be legal in the UK if she wanted to, but she doesn't). She's upset because her parents are being cagey about her conception and are lying about the milk brother thing to her. By the way, OP, how did you find out about the aunt breastfeeding you?

Listen, your mum has a duty of care towards you, no matter the methods by which she became your mum. You not being blood linked doesn't give her the right to beat you or treat you badly. It's almost like you're looking for an excuse to explain why your mum treated you that way, or to make it your fault. Trust me, there are no excuses. It is not your fault. What your mum did to you was terrible and wrong. You deserved better. You still deserve better. You deserve better no matter what your blood or milk or DNA link is to any of these people. And if they can't treat you like parents should, you need to move out.

👏Say it louder for the people in the back.

Respecting religions (or anything else) does mean blindly respecting harmful/derogatory practices associated with them.

I’m sorry Op if you’ve found some responses hard to read, and in some cases islamophobic. Obviously there’s no call for anyone to belittle you because of what you believe.

I think some people would just question whether this is all your personal belief or something you’re going along with because your family do.

I think it’s hard for many readers to see a young woman being so restricted by rules that have by and large been imposed upon you rather than chosen. I hope you find the answers to all of this as I don’t have them.

Would counselling be a start?

My best guess is that your Aunt is your Mother.

She gave birth to you as your Mother couldn't conceive

And all the secrecy is around this narrative

The two embryo story is not real

Secrets kept that affect you are always going to cause trouble, I'm sorry your family have hidden things from you.

I know from a friend who was looking into surrogacy after cancer treatment left her infertile that an implanted egg from another woman causes problems is likely to miscarry unless additional drugs are taken through the pregnancy. Because of the extra drugs needed to maintain a pregnancy from another woman's egg, this is not something that could happen and your mum be unaware.
So if you are unrelated biologically to one of your parents it is most likely your father who is the unrelated one.
Whether your parents understand this and it has caused them marital issues I don't know. Male pride and fertility issues can be tricky, I can imagine in a traditional conservative culture your parents may have struggled with this, it could explain the anger and hitting you experienced (awful btw). I suspect though some truths have come out you still only have part of the picture.

I'd do a DNA test when you can but meanwhile you aren't wrong to be upset and the way your conception and subsequent actions had been handled.
I would expect Islam has some guidance on truth telling etc which your parents don't seem to have acted on... Maybe the influence of that could help you get them to see why they have mistreated you.

Cousin marriage are not incest.

I agree in general, but I think the point is that freedom of religion vests in the individual. So a person can’t choose a religion and as a result impose rules on someone else, only on themselves.

This 1000%

Please get some independent support from a counsellor who has understanding of your background but isn't closed minded and within your community to help with perspective. M

There's far more to bring a parent that dna for starters. But also you really can choose your own destiny, you are British and cannot be told what to do whatever your family say. Control over who you see, date, marry is wrong. There are organisations out there that can help

Guys, she doesn't want to marry her cousin (it would be legal in the UK if she wanted to, but she doesn't)

Why bother mentioning that she now knows she can't marry them/they can't marry her then?

Anyway, the laws need to be revised on cousin marriage in light of up to date genetic info. - this is deeply unfair to kids conceived from cousins. The issues have been touched on on here before.

No but they’re not advisable for the same reasons ie heredity illness

Could well be

And if sister is adopted from the same couple, then DNA tests won't tell OP anything.

If a couple needs IVF then it's not usually a one time thing. Of course, it's not unusual for couples to conceive naturally after IVF, but it's also possible they used IVF/adoption twice.

I agree this explanation makes no sense knowing how IVF works

The simplest explanation would be that an egg [presumably the mothers] was fertilised with fathers sperm mixed with donor sperm [where father has a low sperm count]

This would potentially result in embryos not neccessarily related to one parent [father]

It should be!

My Mum's sister has very possibly passed on the same X chromosome she & my Mum got from either their Mum or Dad to her kids, as our Mum did to us. It's too close - kids of siblings.

One-off cousin marriages are not that likely to cause genetic problems in their offspring.

Families in which there are multiple cousin marriages over generations, such as the OPs, are far more likely to have those problems.

But if I, with no pedigree collapse/endogamy in my family tree, were to marry my cousin, I have no reason to expect genetic problems in my children from that.

Sorry but you're mistaken here. You can get pregnant with another woman's egg with no more or less issues than if it was your own egg.

IVF requires you to take additional medication for the first 10-12 weeks to sustain the pregnancy but that's regardless of if it's your egg or someone else's.

I'm currently 31 weeks pregnant with a donor egg so speaking from experience x

She's mentioning it because (as far as I understand, I'm not Muslim) women can marry their cousins in her culture, and so when they are of marriageable age they cannot be left alone with the cousins. The milk bond is normally done to strengthen ties and allow female cousins to be alone with male cousins. It's usually seen as a positive thing, a deep bond for the baby with her wider family. It makes her the sister of her cousins, symbolically speaking. It's something families do and then are very open about it. Now the OP has found out that her aunt did this for her, but it was kept a secret. This is very weird! And so the OP is suspicious, rightly so.

I think you're being very rude. OP is clearly upset and this is part of her culture. Wet nursing doesnt hurt the child or the woman FFs. In many places around the world this goes on - its prevalent in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Back in the day this even happened in the West these women werencalled a Wet Nurses.

This thread is about op's culture (among other things) so there's not much point in referring to one off cousin marriages.

It's clear this is a multiple marriage across generations cultural scenario. Op assumed they could/might marry until finding this milk sibling thing out; so it's clearly their culture.