Cross Nursing Support

Note; cross nursing is not the same as wet nursing. Wet nursing refers to an arrangement where a mother employs another woman to breastfeed her child full-time. Cross nursing, however, refers to the situation where a mother occasionally relies on another woman to breastfeed her child, but for the majority of the time feeds her child herself.

It's not surprising that few people are comfortable with the idea of cross nursing given that many people are not entirely comfortable with mothers breastfeeding their own children! It is my opinion that, where safe and necessary, cross nursing is a meaningful and altruistic form of support for mothers. Breast milk is vitally important to the health, well-being, and development of all children for at least the first two years of their lives. And while the milk produced by a child's biological mother is the ultimate and perfect recipe for her/him, the breast milk of another healthy mother is superior to artificial milk/formula.

There are issues that should be considered before allowing another woman to breastfeed your child. These include;

• Does the lactating woman have any infections or diseases that might be passed onto your child via her breast milk? Eg. HIV, hepatitis, herpes, syphilis, tuberculosis etc?

• Whether the lactating woman is on any medication? Eg. is she taking medication or using illicit drugs that might enter her breast milk and therefore your child's body? Will this harm your child in any way?

• What does the lactating woman's diet consist of? Eg. does she consume alcohol or caffeine etc?

• Is the milk she produces suitable for a child the same age as yours? Eg. If you have a newborn in need for colostrum/transitional milk, the milk of a woman who is nursing her own older child is not going to have all that your baby needs.

• What impact will cross nursing have on your milk supply? Remember "supply and demand", for every feed your child receives from someone else your breasts are not getting the stimulation required to "place an order" for more milk production for future feeds.

• How might cross nursing effect the bond between you and your child? An important part of breastfeeding is the relationship and bond that you and your child build together. Does cross nursing pose a threat to the intimacy between you and your child?

• How will cross nursing make you feel about yourself, your baby, and the woman who offers her milk? Given the intimate nature of the breastfeeding relationship will receiving cross nursing support make you feel negatively about yourself, towards the lactating woman or your child? How will you feel knowing your child is experiencing that intimacy with another mother?

I'm going to focus on this last point concerning how a mother who receives cross nursing support from another mother might feel about this experience. In an environment where mothers live in separate dwellings from one another and the nuclear family unit (consisting of one mother, one father, and their children) is the primary model through which society is organised, cross nursing is considered a foreign practice. Being part of a cross nursing experience in this context can make for a complex emotional response. At least, it did for me.

During the postpartum period I received cross nursing support from a trusted friend. At the time I felt a mixture of; gratitude towards my friend, relief for my hungry baby, as well as a sense of failure and self-pity. My friend and I agreed that she should feed my baby late one evening the day after my milk had come in. I was engorged, large breasted and flat nippled, hormonal, tired, and overwhelmed. I had not been able to feed my baby in ten hours, and she was understandably upset. I told my friend that I didn't think my daughter was hungry because she wouldn't eat. We called the Australian Breastfeeding Association for support, but there was little the counsellor could do from the other end of a telephone.

The counsellor suggested nipple shields to help give my baby something to latch onto. But we didn't have any and all the stores had closed by that time and wouldn't be open for at least eight hours. There was no formula in the house, which was deliberate, I had felt that it's presence would undermine my confidence and the temptation to use it at the first sign of difficulty would be too great to resist.

Knowing that the milk of her mother was essential to my baby's health, we attempted to express. I held my breast pump on one breast and my friend held her pump to my other breast. We found that my breasts were so engorged that we struggled to get the pumps on properly. After a while of unsuccessfully attempting to express milk from my breasts my friend offered to nurse my baby and I agreed. It was the right decision at the time given the circumstances and given my friend's health and the healthy lifestyle she leads in order to nurse her own child. But it wasn't ideal because her milk was not made for my baby, and because her child was seventeen months older than mine, and my baby needed the specific type of milk that my breasts were making for her stage of development.

My baby was very hungry by that stage and she had no trouble latching onto my friend and having a feeding frenzy. Shortly after, my baby went to sleep and my friend and I returned to trying to express my milk, which after several extremely painful hours we managed to do.

In the hours immediately after this cross nursing experience I made some very harsh judgments of myself. I told myself that I was a useless mother because I couldn't feed my baby, and that it wouldn't matter to my baby if I disappeared because my friend could meet her needs anyway. One of the factors contributing to my state of mind at this time was the hormonal changes my body was undergoing on account of my milk coming in. But even for the first couple of months after this I felt like the fact that my daughter had been cross nursed meant I had failed her.

I remember sharing this story with another friend, who is another avid lactivist, and her response was that she thought it was beautiful that I had received such meaningful support. At the time I did not share this romantic view of my experience, and dwelt on the fact that my baby had had something other than my milk inside her delicate newborn gut. A couple of months later, though, I reached a point of acceptance and appreciation.

With the aid of nipple shields my baby was able to latch on and get her milk, and eventually we no longer required the shields. Had we never been able to establish our breastfeeding relationship I might have felt worse about our cross nursing experience, but as it is I have never felt negatively toward my friend and the wonderful support she provided my family that evening.

Three months after that challenging night I realised that I no longer felt like a failure or upset by the fact that I was not the only mother to have nursed my baby. I felt extremely grateful that I had a friend who cared so much for my family that she offered something so personal of herself to help us. And even at the time I was very appreciative of the fact that no one in my support circle suggested I give my baby artificial milk. I would have felt very undermined and threatened by someone suggesting formula feeding, because it would have made me feel I was beyond help. However, my friend offering her own breasts as a one-off solution in that moment, said to me that it was far from over for me.

This has been my only personal experience with cross nursing thus far. Because it was a one-off arrangement the threat my milk supply and to the bond between my daughter and I was minimal. However, it was not something I would have chosen had I been able to express my own milk or attach my baby to my breast at the time. I believe that the negative emotions I felt about this experience in the months after it happened were related more to my inability to breastfeed my baby than cross nursing itself.

For more on cross nursing please take a look at the following articles:

Is It Safe To Share Breast Milk?

Wet Nursing And Cross Nursing

Not Your Mother's Milk

Concerns With Nursing Another's Baby

Infant Feeding in Emergencies pages 43-45

Infant and Young Child Nutrition (World Health Organization) page 17