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Primary education

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Original poster

my friends ds was fed breastmilk at school !!!

345 replies

mummyof2bunnies · 04/06/2008 21:27

My friend came round today in a bit of a state, she was asking her ds7 what he had done at school today and he replied that so and so's mum came in to class today and was telling them all about her new baby and brought baby food for them to try, and that they got to try breastmilk on teaspoons and breastmilk mixed in baby food now i am no prude i breastfed both my dds but i would be horrified if my dd came home and told me this. Friend was completely horrified as well is going to speak to the head 2mrw the mum in Q was a former classroom assistant at the school b4 she had her baby and my friends ds said she was the only one in class and the teacher was not there when they where trying the foods . I am sure this has to be wrong on so many levels i'm trying to look at it from another point of view but all i feel is anger that she did this can anyone else share their feelings on this....

OP posts:
WonderingWhy · 04/06/2008 22:28

No no I don't mean in a casual way - I mean with the sort of intensity equal to breastfeeding - you know, sitting my child on their lap and saying, 'Oh haven't you got lovely hair' and stroking it - well I would find that intrusive and odd.

I don't mean if they needed comforting and it was a familiar adult.

Has anyone ever done that to your child, someone you don't know?

I can see how you might have misunderstood my point btw.

WonderingWhy · 04/06/2008 22:31

Sorry I do sound barking. It's just I was watching some children playing with ds today, one had the most beautiful curls and I would have loved to touch her hair but I thought it would be a very odd thing to do! (I didn't know her or her mother)

So I didn't.

theAfkaUrbanDryad · 04/06/2008 22:31

No - not someone i didn't know. I wouldn't be happy if some random stranger had ds on their lap stroking his hair!

But in this instance, the woman was another mother, who had been working in the school for x amount of time, and was certainly not a stranger!

cheesesarnie · 04/06/2008 22:31

what did the child think of it?and did he actually say breast milk or the babies milk.
id be cross if wasnt asked permission or given a chance to think how i feel about it.but thats in same way id feel if my veggie children were given meat or fish.

WonderingWhy · 04/06/2008 22:31

And I misunderstood OP if the woman was a friend of the mother who was upset.

I think breast milk is very intimate between a mother and a child.

eenybeeny · 04/06/2008 22:34

I have divided thoughts on this - am only posting to say I find it fascinating and look forward to get clarification on what really happened.

theAfkaUrbanDryad · 04/06/2008 22:35

Anyway - regardless of how you feel about a breastfeeding relationship (and i still maintain that I wouldn't be bothered by someone else feeding my ds breastmilk!) the risk of communicating disease is too high, especially for a school. But then i don't think anyone's said that that wasn't an issue.

I'd be much less bothered about someone giving my ds their breastmilk than i would be about them giving him formula!

barbamama · 04/06/2008 22:41

Surely the boy has got it wrong?! No school would let that happen - maybe it was formula milk in a carton as babies milk? I bf both mine but would be really pissed off if someone gave them milk - human or cow, that was unpasteurised without my knowledge or permission.

Heated · 04/06/2008 22:42

I'd think yuck, but I often think that, having small children who bring me 'presents' they've found in the garden. More perturbed by baby snakes (aka worms) and made-homeless snails than a bit of bm.

Wouldn't be bothered by it enough to complain, being pretty sure dcs ingest worse.

ravenAK · 04/06/2008 22:43

Even if it is human milk, I'd find it hard to be upset about it - definitely not on an emotional level, & I'd need to see some convincing evidence of cross-feeding causing illnesses to be passed on before I worried about that, either.

It's a shame milk is so emotionally charged. SIL & I are both bf'ing at the moment, & we have a running babysitting joke about 'oh don't bother with the expressing, I'll just whop X on the other boob' - but we don't actually give it a go. Probably we should!

BoyzntheShire · 04/06/2008 22:47

oh come on... a drop of milk, be it unpateurised cows milk, someone elses bm, formula, goats milk, bloody man-from-mars milk... a drop to taste is not going to kill or infect anyone

bloody mad hysteria. children are not strile little things you cant possibly touch or breathe on fgs, they do need to live in the world without a protective bubble round them. has anyone heard of an immune system? and how you need to be exposed to things to build a good strong one?

madness i tell you, MADness !

BoyzntheShire · 04/06/2008 22:48

and i have no problem with cross breastfeeding either. i cant fathom what the big deal is.

specialmagiclady · 04/06/2008 22:50

I'm trying really hard to get worked up about this.

No... I can't. But I can see that parental consent would be the wise approach.

specialmagiclady · 04/06/2008 22:50

I'm trying really hard to get worked up about this.

No... I can't. But I can see that parental consent would be the wise approach.

Rowlers · 04/06/2008 22:55

She sounds ever so slightly peculiar to me.
I can't imagine thinking "I know what I'll do when I take my baby in to school to show the children, I'll also take in some of my own breastmilk and let all the children taste it".
Spécial, as they say en France.
Whether the school knew / knows she has done this is an interesting question. I can't imagine it ever being given the go-ahead.
Your woman sounds like a total maverick who has acted completely independently.
I suspect the staff at the school are equally horrified.

OverMyDeadBody · 04/06/2008 23:01

I agree BoyzntheShire, it's bloody MADNESS!

OverMyDeadBody · 04/06/2008 23:03

I did think that too Rowlers. No school in their right mind would give the go ahead for sometihng like this.

Desiderata · 04/06/2008 23:07

What a weirdo.

The thing is, that every kid in that school will remember that they drank her breast milk .. when they're teenagers.

Self-absorbed? Just a little. Keep your tit milk to yourself, love.

BoyzntheShire · 04/06/2008 23:15

i reckon she was just trying to normalise bm/bf for a new generation of kids, by treating it as the perfectly normal process it is.
i reckon she didnt for one second bank on peoples reactions being quite so.... out of proportion.

Desiderata · 04/06/2008 23:18

Out of proportion?????

I'd be fecking livid. I think it's gross, and I think this woman lives in cloud cuckoo land if she thinks it's OK to do that.

She's set her poor kid up for ridicule. I don't think any cause is worth that.

BoyzntheShire · 04/06/2008 23:20

i think people who think bm is gross are living in cloud cuckoo land tbh

maaaaaaaaaadddd

roquefort · 04/06/2008 23:22

What matters is that the child was given unpasturised milk (same would apply to unpasturised cows' milk if they were on a farm visit) and that does carry a significant risk - much more than some of the H&S issues people worry about. People will have different views about how appropriate it was, but it is the risk of passing on disease which is the most important, surely.

barbamama · 04/06/2008 23:23

I don't think it is gross per se - I am regularly covered in my own breastmilk after all, and the risk of infection would be miniscule, I just think it is a liberty with other peoples children, on principle.

barbamama · 04/06/2008 23:24

miniscule I would hope, but who knows!

Whooosh · 04/06/2008 23:24

Just plain weird IMHO-too personal and just ODD...
Goats milk-yes-they can say they like it and can choose to have it as part of their diet-not so with bm...

Really not sure what it was supposed to achieve.

Am all for expanding knowledge and broadening horizons but really do not understand how this could benefit these children...