Cross-Nursing
by Kate Kahn - 04th February 2008
I came across an article recently that blew mind and sent my brain into wild imagination. It was about a woman who breastfed her friend's child and her friend reciprocated the favor. You're kidding me is what first jumped into my brain which was trying to wrap itself around the concept. Picture it. You're a new mom and you're at your mothers' group when one woman says "want to swap?" Okay, she might not actually say it like that. It might go more like "want me to feed your little darling and you feed mine?" Ye-ah, you get my drift. Why would women want to even do this I wondered, my curiosity clearly piqued! Reading the article further revealed the answer. The two women involved were good friends and felt it would deepen their bond even further. Okie dokie then.
But, not wanting to rush to judgement I decided to do some research on it. Maybe I was crazy for thinking they were nuts. So in I dug on the Internet and sure enough there's a name for it: cross-nursing. I kept reading. Interestingly, I found out the La Leche League not only doesn't encourage the practice but avidly discourages it for a whole host of reasons: the possibility of transmitting viruses and diseases through breast milk, possible reduction of your supply for your own baby, and the psychological effect it can have on the baby (and those are just some of the reasons).
It's heartening to see that the La Leche doesn't support the practice even if it's for reasons much more legitimate than mine (which was "oh, that's gross!"). But I have to agree with one thing I read in my quest to know more about the subject. The writer proposed, "as taboo as it is, it really makes sense that it would be emerging as a trend right now: there's so much pressure on new mothers today to exclusively breast-feed that a whole industry for out-sourcing the job has emerged." Something to think about anyway.
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