Wet nurse

The Future King Louis XIV as an infant with his wet nurse.

A wet nurse, also known as cross nurse, is a woman hired to breast feed and care for another's child. Wet nurses are hired when the mother is unable, or chooses not to, nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings" and in some cultures develop a special relationship. When mothers (nurse) each other's babies, this act of wet-nursing may also be called cross-nursing or co-nursing.

Reasons

A wet-nurse or cross-nurse may be employed if the mother of a baby is unable or elects not to breast-feed her infant. Reasons are incredibly varied and may range from serious or chronic illnesses such as cancer and their treatment to temporary difficulties nursing. Additionally, a mother's taking (prescription or illegal) drugs may necessitate a wet-nurse if a drug in any way changes the content of her milk.

Wet-nurses have also been required when there is insufficient production of breast milk, i.e., the mother feels incapable of adequately nursing her child, especially following multiple births. Wet nurses tend to be more common in geographical areas where the maternal childbirth mortality is high..

Eliciting milk

A woman can only act as a wet-nurse if she is lactating. Previous wisdom held that the wet-nurse must have recently undergone childbirth. This is not necessarily always the case, as regular breast suckling can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion. Some adoptive mothers have been able to establish lactation using a breastpump so that they could feed an adopted infant.

Dr Gabrielle Palmer states, "There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously," (known as "tandem feeding") and estimates that some women could thoeretically be able to feed up to five babies.

Historical practice

The practice of using wet nurses is ancient and common to many cultures. Occasionally, it is linked to social class, where the aristocracy, nobility or upper classes had their children wet-nursed, in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly to ensure an heir, most especially if the infant was the first born, or if first born was female in order to adhere to inheritance laws based around the ancient concept of primogeniture colloquially known in English as "an heir and a spare". Prince William Windsor and Prince Harry Windsor are a good example of the "heir and a spare" practice.

Lactation may inhibit ovulation in some women, thus the practice has a practical basis.

Poor women, especially those who suffered the stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child, sometimes had to give their baby up, temporarily or permanently, and a wet-nurse would then nurse it.

Ancient history

In all cultures mythology is very rich in tales of superhuman, supernatural, human and in some instances animal wet-nurses.

The ancient Romans believed their collective origin to be from Romulus and Remus who were breast-fed by the she-wolf, Lupa, as seen in the famous Capitoline Wolf. The Romans also believed that a baby who had a Greek wet nurse would grow up speaking Greek as well as Latin. This gave rise to the phrase "mother tongue"

Jewish tradition holds that the Egyptian princess Batya (whose place is occupied by Egyptian queen Asiya in Islamic tradition) attempted to wet-nurse Moses but he would only take his biological mother's milk.

Naomi, from the Old Testament, re-lactated to feed her grandchild so Ruth, the infant's mother, could go to war after her husband Boaz was killed.

The prophet Muhammad was wet-nursed by Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb.

Renaissance to modern era

Once wet-nursing was so commonplace to the British Isles that Jane Austen mentions it in Emma:

"For years it was a really good job for a woman. In 17th- and 18th-century Britain a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than her husband could as a labourer. And if you were a royal wet nurse you would be honoured for life."

Wet nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV, the early 17th century. Later, Napoleon was wet-nursed by a woman called Camilla.

Wet nurses were common for children of all social ranks in the southern United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Women took in babies for money in Victorian Britain, and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest. This was known as baby-farming; poor care sometimes resulted in high infant death rates.

Wet nursing has sometimes been used with old or sick people who have trouble taking other nutrition. John Jacob Astor and John D. Rockefeller reportedly hired wet nurses for their own use in their old age.

Stephen Pinker speculated that Sigmund Freud's theories about the Oedipal complex were the result of Freud being raised by a wet-nurse, rather than his mother because this dissociation from his mother would have prevented the Westermarck effect from taking hold.

In Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as many other Asian nations, such as China a wet-nurse who may be employed adjunct to a nanny has been a mark of aristocracy or wealth and high status. Additionally, a woman may wet-nurse and rear a relative (especially a poorer one's) new-born as a mancing (Javanese langauge for lure) to induce another wanted pregnancy, where repeated attempts at pregnancy have failed. The mythology of Asia is full of such events.

Dr Naomi Baumslag,, noted legendary wet-nurse Judith Waterford whom: "In 1831, on her 81st birthday, she could still produce breast milk. In her prime she unfailingly produced two quarts [four pints] (2273 mL) of breast milk a day."

Following the widespread marketing and availability of artificial baby milk, or infant formula, wet nursing went into decline after World War II and fell out of style in the affluence of the mid-1950s. Wet nurses are considered no longer necessary in developed nations and, therefore, are no longer common.

Cultural attitudes and taboos

In contemporary affluent Western societies particularly effected by the successful marketing of baby formula, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural squeamishness, notably the United States and United Kingdom. The UK government is (as of 2008) currently promoting breast-feeding, and current advertising rules prevent artificial baby-formula being depicted or implied as superior to breast-milk.

Many countries adhere to the World Health Organization's 'International Code of Marketing Breast-milk Substitutes, created specifically to protect mothers and babies, and breastfeeding, from undue and false persuasion from commercial influence.

In countries like the United States, that do not observe the above International Code and thus allow penetrative promotion of baby-formula as equal or superior to breast milk, and aggressively market it via product sample distribution through hospital gift-bags, mass-media advertising etc., there is a greater cultural disapproval of breastfeeding, and wet-nursing has been on occasion viewed as child abuse.

When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is screened, pasteurized, expressed milk (or especially colostrum) donated to milk banks, analogous to blood banks. The World Health Organization recommends that babies be fed, in order of preference: 1) at the breast, 2) via expressed breast milk, 3) with pasteurized, screened, donor breastmilk from an accredited human milk bank, and as last resort, with 4) artificial baby milk, or infant formula.

Dr Rhonda Shaw notes: Western objections to wet-nurses are cultural:

"The exchange of body fluids between different women and children, and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable. The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency. Cultures with breast fetishes tend to conflate the sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast."

Wet-nurses are still common in many developing countries, although the practice poses a risk of infections such as HIV.

Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies, the salaries of wet-nurses there increased dramatically The use of a wet-nurse is seen as a status symbol in some parts of modern China .

Islamic law or sharia specifies a permanent family-like relationships (known as rada) between children nursed by the same woman, i.e., who grew up together as youngsters. They and various specific relatives may not marry, that is, they are deemed mahram. In Arabic cultures the rules of modesty known as hijab are as relaxed as they would be for biological or adopted family members.

The subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a UNICEF goodwill trip to Sierra Leone in 2009, Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breast-feed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew. The sick one-week-old baby had been born the same day but a year later than her daughter, who had not yet been weaned. Hayek later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great-grandmother spontaneously breast-feeding a hungry baby in a village.

Fiction

Wet-nursing is a prominent theme throughout human mythology and fiction, too numerous to list individually. Some include:

• In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet the character Nurse had been Juliet's wet nurse. "Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat." 1.3.72

• In Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, the character Natasha Rostov, after changing wet nurses three times, elected to nurse her children herself despite opposition from her husband, mother, and doctors.
• In George Moore's novel Esther Waters, the eponymous heroine works as a wet nurse after the birth of her son while leaving him in the hands of a baby farmer.

• In John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, set in a time of great poverty, a woman whose baby has just died, and consequently whose breasts are engorged with milk, wet-nurses a man at the point of death, as no other nourishment is available, a reference to Roman Charity.

• In the movie Spartacus, Crassus captures Spartacus's wife and baby. Since he wants Varinia as a concubine, he purchases a wet nurse for her baby. Varinia rejects his offer, saying, "I sent her away: I prefer to nurse the child myself."

• In Blackadder II, Nursie, the Queen's childhood nurse, is commonly perceived as being a perpetual wet nurse: “In the old days, it was all difficult choices. Should you have Nursie-milk or moo-cow milk? Of course, it was always Nursie milk….”

• In Darcy & Elizabeth: Nights and Days at Pemberley by Linda Berdoll, Elizabeth Darcy hires a wet nurse, Mrs. Littlepage, for her and Darcy's twins. Owing to the multiple birth, Lizzy and Mrs. Littlepage must share the role, much to the consternation of Mrs. Bennet, who finds it unseemly that Lizzy breastfeeds her children.

See also

• Roman Charity, works of art based on the story of a daughter feeding her dying father.
• Milkmaid
• Mrs. Pack, a wet nurse to the child William, Duke of Gloucester (1689 – 1700).
• Milk kinship