Sharing breastfeeding

[ema-adama]

This is not something I feel comfortable with, emotionally. There is a group of mothers who are doing this to boost their babies immunity to a broader variety of diseases. I haven't spoken to the mother who is spreading this information yet, but I am interested to hear opinions here.

One mum is very keen for me to be part of this group as I have had mumps, measles, chickenpox and whooping cough. From what I remember, immunity to these diseases is trans-placental and not through the breastmilk. So sharing breastfeeding for protection from these diseases doesn't really make sense, right?

[deesalie]

I support shared breastfeeding when absolutely necessary such as in an emergency situation where I'm unable to feed my child. I don't know why you'd go to the extent of sharing immunity. I'm not overly afraid of disease and would rather treat whatever they picked up. Same as I wouldn't bother vaccinating homeopathically.

[Seaweed]

I support shared breastfeeding when absolutely necessary such as in an emergency situation where I'm unable to feed my child.
ITA!!!

One thing which is totally anecdotal. dd#3 got a very mild case of german measles from a recently vaxed child at dd#2's kindy when she was exclusively bf. I am immune. dd#2 did not get it. She was not bf at the time. My understanding, which is probably very sketchy, is bf assists with immunity when exposed to the actual disease vs working like they say vaxes should?

[ema-adama]

Thanks.

The mum who spoke to me about this is scared of the diseases. She has not vaxed her 7 month old yet, but will. In her mind a dose of thimerasol is better than the constant fear of tetanus. And the polio vax is better than braces and iron lungs.

I can understand wanting to protect little babies from measles. Vaccinated mothers offer less protection.

Yeah, I think sharing breastfeeding when it is saves lives is a good thing. I am not sure I am comfortable with 'pass the baby'.

[Seaweed]

Yeah, I think sharing breastfeeding when it is saves lives is a good thing. I am not sure I am comfortable with 'pass the baby'. What I meant was if I happened to be somewhere else & the baby was starving & very miserable. Not that that ever happened as I always took the kids everywhere with me literally. By the time I left them, they were way old enuf, & then some, to eat solids. Theoretically, I would not have minded so much. One thing I saw when the kids school had their measles outbreak was the fear of disease. If you don't vax out of fear of the side effects but you fear the disease. It is all gonna fall down one day. Like those people who say they don't vax but would if there was an outbreak of some nasty disease. It's like huh? Which bit did you not get?!

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I do not support shared breastfeeding, unless there is no other option, and the reason for that is that breastmilk contains stem-cells and immune orchestrants specific to that mother and that child. People think that "milk" is all the same. Well, it's not. It's as individual as the person producing it.

yes, it's better than formula and breastmilk banks have a place, but each baby does best on it's own breastmilk.

[cartersmom]

I do not support shared breastfeeding, unless there is no other option, and the reason for that is that breastmilk contains stem-cells and immune orchestrants specific to that mother and that child. People think that "milk" is all the same. Well, it's not. It's as individual as the person producing it.

yes, it's better than formula and breastmilk banks have a place, but each baby does best on it's own breastmilk.

Yup... I agree with MT. Lifesaving situations only!

[ema-adama]

I do not support shared breastfeeding, unless there is no other option, and the reason for that is that breastmilk contains stem-cells and immune orchestrants specific to that mother and that child. People think that "milk" is all the same. Well, it's not. It's as individual as the person producing it.

yes, it's better than formula and breastmilk banks have a place, but each baby does best on it's own breastmilk.

As always, I am interested to read your opinion.

Emotionally I just did not feel comfortable with it. And I know that a breastfeeding mother and child are a unit. It did not make sense to me to mess with that.

Hopefully I'll get to chat with the mother who is promoting this idea and try to understand her reasoning.

I also know that donated breastmilk is better than formula. So I had a hard time rationalizing why I would not want to share breastfeeding. It came down to 'it just doesn't feel right'.

It's a bit awkward when there is the expectation that you be part of something like that, with the implication that you are stuck up for not sharing.... as with all things in parenting, I am following my gut.

[MinorityView]

breastfeeding is emotionally very intimate...
we don't want to treat people as though they are goats or cows

[Spy]

It doesn't sound to me like these people really understand how breastfeeding works, immunologically and otherwise. Their reasoning just does not show they see it right. It sounds almost like something akin to vaccinations where there is 'immunity in breastmilk', the more the merrier. Doesn't work this way :). If a baby has full access to their mothers milk, there is nothing anyone else's milk can do to improve on that :). If they don't - now thats a whole other matter, it is not 'sharing for immunity' it is donated human milk, which surely beats the formula.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

It seems to me to skirt the issue that other than parents with a serious disease, or a bilateral mastectomy, there is absolutely no physiological reason for a mother NOT to breastfeed her own children.

Having said that, I had to admit that I did co-feed a friend of mine's child for some time. The situation was pretty drastic, and the child had no other choice. Serious family allergies and no formula could be used.

I had plenty to spare. It wasn't a case that the mother couldn't. It had been the usual stuffed up delivery, and the mother got a huge abscess in one breast along with other caesarian complications. I fed her son until she started to get better, then helped her relactate.

It's interesting that of all her children (and she breastfed them all) that child is the healthiest with the least allergy issues. It may be that my breastmilk helped that - but it was an exception situation. No breastmilk bank. out in the country. Formula not an option.

So I did what I felt I had to do, but didn't enjoy it. I enjoyed helping my friend, but I found it very hard to handle emotionally.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

PS. over the years, I've breastfed three babies out of necessity, two only once or twice. Only one, longer term. Each time, it shook me to the core, emotionally. I did it willingly each time, knowing how it felt the previous time. There were differences each time, but it's not an ideal situation.

[MinorityView]

This is interesting. Historically, huge numbers of women were professional wet nurses, although as a practice it was always controversial. The literature is full of stories of problems.

But one interesting bit I've come across, is the belief that the best wet nurses were stupid. Ignorance and empty-headedness were considered the best qualities for a woman who was going to nurse other women's babies. To the point that the wet-nurse was rarely expected to actually care for the baby. There was a specialized baby nurse to take care of that.

Truly weird.

I've only once nursed someone else's baby. It was a very odd experience.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

It's odd. I causes tsunami's in the head.

[ZGT Mummy]

For me breastfeeding is such an emotional and psychological act that to actually wet nurse another child would definitely be as you describe MT. Tsunami in my head. I could not even think of doing it.

Is it not enough to express and bottle feed the EBM? Surely seeing as we're talking saving a baby from formula then EBM is sufficient in the short term till the mother is able to feed the baby herself? Or is there something I'm missing?

[MinorityView]

Considering that high quality pumps are readily available, if milk really needs to be shared, it needn't involve the very intimate process of breastfeeding.

For some reason this all reminds me of my daughter, when she was pregnant with her first. She kept holding other people's babies, I think wanting to get the hang of it or something. One baby was too wiggly, another too limp, a third just seemed not quite the right shape and so on. Of course when her baby finally arrived she was exactly right, wiggly enough, lively enough and the perfect shape. We are really intimately aligned with our own child, unless post-natal depression or something of that sort interferes with the bonding process.