Breastfeeding a stranger’s child

[grou]

I was recently told of a friend’s friend who under very specific circumstances was compelled to breastfeed a complete stranger’s baby. I find the concept quite disturbing. Think remote, small airport. One rug shop for duty free. But then again a starving baby is a starving baby.

As far as I am aware there were really no alternative options available.

It's much more disturbing that a baby would go hungry because someone doesn't like the idea of another mother breastfeeding the baby.

I’m sure 99.9% of people with the ability to breastfeed wouldn’t consider doing it if they knew they had something transmissible

It’s what they don’t know is the problem, not what they do know.

In the circumstances you are describing I think if you could you definitely would, my friend felt a real urge to feed someone else’s baby once (she didn’t!) because it looked malnourished, her body was certainly willing to do it.

Even if that baby would starve without it? Sounds like there was no other option in this circumstance.

HIV and lots of other infections can be transmitted through breast milk. I would therefore never let another woman feed my baby. Donated breast milk is different, because I guess that it gets tested. I would also be pretty mad if someone just breastfed my child, because many people who have HIV don't even know it for a couple of years, because there are no symptoms. Your best friend could have it, too. It's just not safe.

The context is important. Nothing else available in a remote small airport with a starving baby.

Another milk donor here. Yes I’d feed a stranger’s baby if there were no other option- wouldn’t think twice. It’s an unusual situation though.

I'd feed someone else's baby if the circumstances required it. A hungry baby is a hungry baby, there's nothing else to it is there?

It's not disturbing at all. I wouldn't want my babies breastfed by someone else but I'm fine to feed someone else's.

I had to accept my baby receiving donated milk to survive. Try as I might I found it impossible to produce milk for my premature baby, weighing him under 2lb and fighting for his life. I felt guilty about it at the time and don't want to be made to feel guilty all over again.

I don't think it is any different from donated blood to preserve life.

I really don’t get this intimate thing between mother and child, I breastfed my baby and it never felt intimate, if anything it was slightly (physically) uncomfortable but I soldiered on for 2 years anyway! I understand the worries about safety but I’m assuming if there was just a rug stall at the airport then the mothers in this area are unlikely to be concerned about that above just keeping their babies fed and alive.

Yes exactly this.

If both mothers were happy with the situation, then I don’t see a problem. A hungry baby got fed.

If the lactating mother was bullied into doing this against her will, that does make me uncomfortable and to question if there were genuinely no other options

It’s a wonderful story and thank goodness for the baby! I imagine in the UK we would all feel too squeamish leaving the poor baby to starve

I assumed she meant that she felt compelled by the circumstances and her body (seeing a starving child) but maybe I misunderstood.

As a a very young teen mum automatically breast feeding for financial reasons, back in the days when most where bottle feeding and they went to nursery at night; I breastfed a baby born withdrawing from heroin. I got tired of listening to his high pitched incessant crying in pain while mine comfortably suckled.
I was supposed to put mine back in the cot, then pump the leftovers for him, and a nurse would mix it in with powdered feed, and hold the bottle into his cot to feed him.

His mother couldn't feed him and he was just a terribly alone object of pity, changed and fed in his cot, mewling and shrieking, waiting for what my baby left and a nurse to have time to hold a bottle out to him.

One night his pitiful shrieks completely got to me (it's not any sort of normal cry and I can still hear it) and overwhelmed I just picked him up and he instinctively latched on, and the terrible noises stopped, so I let him.

Matron walked in on it and instead of hitting the roof, just said it was about time someone gave him a cuddle. So that was that and an unofficial routine started.
I spent the next three weeks expressing in the daytime and dual feeding at night, and the nurses stopped complaining about what a nuisance binding and unbinding me was.

Matron was a very sensible woman, that baby went on to have a difficult life, re addicted via methadone as a small child, and in and out of care, but he got warmth, cuddled, and fed when he was born into misery and at a time when his mother was unable to.

No regrets whatsoever, I'm glad I was too young to even think about rights and wrongs and just saw need, and matron was wise enough to know how to quietly use the situations we were all in.
( I admit there's an instinct to cross my arms over my breasts when when I see him now as an adult male, but he's a lot bigger these days!)

Neither is your baby starving when apparently there’s literally no possibility of obtaining formula.

Nothing new. Wet nurses were very common;
A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for another's child.[1] Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some societies, the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship. Wet-nursing existed in societies around the world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century. The practice has made a small comeback in the 21st century

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6071409/amp/Heroic-female-police-officer-breastfeeds-malnourished-baby.html

I think if your body is in breastfeeding mode and you are in this situation I don't think you would refuse. I almost think it would be a compulsion to help. And if I was the mother and there was no option I would gratefully accept.

I have always admired Salma Hayek for this https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,205323020532299_2053220,00.html

This. I think I'd find it emotionally difficult as the mother of the baby if another women was able to breastfeed my child while I wasn't for whatever reason. But I'd have happily helped another family in an emergency if the choice was that or a starving, dehydrated baby and if it wouldn't negatively impact my own (i.e. i had a plentiful supply). Of course I would.

I understand why modem social mores might make you hesitate and I probably would feel unconfirmed with it under normal circumstances but in an emergency situation like that you just do what you have to do.

I wouldn't find it icky - I'd see it as an act of kindness more so because it's not something that would ordinarily be done, iyswim. Kind of like mouth to mouth resuscitation!

Do you feel weird about feeding a baby formula? That is milk from another mammal.

I think that women getting the ick about what is our greatest gift is an example of how the Patriarchy has got to us, devaluing and othering us.

Most people will have a pretty good idea of how realistic any risk of HIV is.

I think if the parent consented it's totally fine. I mean most people drink cow breast milk so...

It's biologically and historically totally normal and many times/cultures would see breastfeeding another's baby as no more "intimate" as feeding them with a spoon. Weird to me that you think it's weird or somehow taboo.