nice story about feeding quake orphans

[oilandwater]

edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/05/22/riminton.china.breastfeed.hero.cnn

A baby that is exclusively being breastfed has a very small risk of contracting HIV infection from a woman who is HIV positive.

The WHO now recognises that in many parts of the world it is safer for an HIV+ woman to bf her baby than it is to FF him.

I don't know enough about the risks of contracting HIV through saliva so I won't answer taht one.

I have to say, I would go slightly mental if any one offered to Br feed my DD. I would say no immediately and get home asap. Its a very intimate, special thing that I do with my DD, I would not want her to be feeding from another womans body, unless her life were in danger, in such circumstances as they found themselves in the earthquake.

It really is not a normal thing to do, at all, or to suggest unless under such circumstances. I'm surprised your friend said yes NA, really surprised. It just feels wrong to me, on so many levels... But, each to their own I guess!

I was thinking about this last night whilst bfing DD. All those babies without a Mummy, needing feeding. How many of us post about our lo not taking a bottle etc. I was really upsetting myself. Now I feel much better. I would do the same in an instant.

What a hero! I read that they were desperate to find lactating wome in Burma to feed orphans, the water supply is contaminated & it is far too dangerous to rely on formula (even if the had it)

I wouldn't think twice about it - or indeed if my child needed feeding & I couldn't do it I'd be happy for them to be wetnursed. My daughter was born slightly premature & very jaundiced, I couldn't express enough milk for her (she was tube fed) so she had a couple of days of expressed milk fom my lovely SIL until my supply established.

I was fed as an infant by my mum's best friend (her daughter is just a couple of weeks younger than me) & her daughter was fed by my mum - they were proper hippies

I believe that in the case of cracked nipples, a baby who is HIV+ can pass it on, but I haven't checked any updated reports or research on that, so could be inaccurate.

i can see in that case it may be solo but in these cases the babies already know how to latch and the wetnurse already know how to bf so there is only a small chance of cracked nips.

I would hope I would do the same thing in the same set of circumstances. I would bring my dd along with me to keep feeding her but then, she was in uniform so I suppose i can't take my dd to 'work'.

I would bf or express for another baby besides my own in a heartbeat. I would be very grateful for someone to offer to wetnurse my baby if i could not do it myself.

I don't think that wetnursing is not normal. I think it has become 'not normal' when breastfeeding became 'not normal' in some societies.

I just want to clarify that what the women in the earthquake did, was fantastic. I was ot suggesting that that wasn't.

I was referring to nappyaddict's post about looking after a friends baby for the evening, runnig out of milk and br feeding the baby herself. I know it was with permission. Its just a situation like that seems wrong to me, it hardly constitutes a starving baby. NA, i'm ot saying this in a really nasty way, I promise you, ( you know me better than that - I hope! ) I'm just really shocked!

A pre arranged situation, where a baby is wet-nursed from birth, or, as part of the social/family situation, where it is the norm, and agreed by all etc, again, is not what i was referring to. It's quite unusual, but again, not necessarily 'abnormal'.

Just the idea that if my DD was with a friend, and she wasn't settling with a bottle of EBM etc that a friend would even think to breast feed her herself, would be wrong. I'd never even consider thinking such a thing, unless it was what we all did... or unless, as I say, under exceptional circumstances such as the earhtquake or some kind of disaster etc...

I am not saying that wetnursing in itself is 'not normal' just as a drop of the hat, solution to a crying baby... that is what seems wrong to me. But, both NA ad her friend were happy, so it is just my opinion.

I would do exactly the same as the Police woman in china under the same circumstances, of course I would! If I were able, and there were properly starving babies there, then i'd not hesitate. I'd do ^anything& I possibly could to preserve their lives.

I'd gladly express for another baby, but I don't think I'd feed it directly. As someone else said, it's a really close personal thing(or words to that effect), so no, not for me I don't think.
As for my baby being bf'd by another...not sure about that either. I'm not a ff fan though, so not sure.

susie, what i was trying to say is that not so long ago, even in teh UK, wetnursing was considered normal. Perceptions of many things change over time so i can't see why it can't become normalised again. I know you are expressing your opinion which isn't right or wrong but to me having the opinion you hold indicates how much the trend in feeding practice over the last 50 yrs or so have affected what we think is normal to do. BTW, they 'you' doesn't necessarily mean you either, it really is that i think most people in the UK today would consider the idea of wetnursing abhorrent especially in a scenario where they felt the feeding wasn't in the case of an emergency.

fwiw, i know 2 women in their sixties, one in the US and one in the UK, who had baby sitting groups where they could go out for a longish period of time and knew that if their baby needed feeding that the woman from the group doing the babysitting would feed their babies. These women weren't dyed in the stereotypical lentil weavers either.

i'd happily feed someone else's baby, esp in a situation where bf-ing would otherwise end, i don't know, like if the mum was in hospital for an overnight stay or something. i would also like to think friends would do the same for dd but to be honest i don't think they would, and i don't mean that in a bad way against them, just that they would think yuk!

and in a disaster situation like the clip - absolutely.

that made me cry by the way

right now having just fed a slapping, pinching, wriggling, crying 5.5mth old, feeding a newborn just sounds like heaven. i'd LOVE to feed a tiny baby again....broody....oh NO...!

"Its just a situation like that seems wrong to me"

What - morally wrong? How is that?

Or wrong in the sense that it just makes you feel uncomfortable?