Shake Your Money-Makers--Wet Nursing in the New Millennium

Published in the Idaho State Journal and Blackfoot Morning News, week of March 6, 2011


So, I had a baby. And it’s everything they said it would be. I’m pretty sure I have the most perfect, amazing baby that has ever been born, and she is a delight even when she’s screaming at 3:00 am. Getting to know this sweet-smelling, cooing, squirmy bundle of collective unconsciousness has created a profound shift in my life. Since I have baby-related, mind-blowing epiphanies about as often as I change a diaper these days, I don’t really even know where to start. So I’ll jump right in.

What is the deal with breastfeeding? There are many, many things you learn about pregnancy, parenting, and babies that nobody told you during your childless days. Like that you are actually pregnant 10 months, not 9 months. I imagined breastfeeding to mirror that scene in Blue Lagoon where Emmeline accidentally lowers her newborn baby near her breast and he starts nursing like a pro. This is not how it works.

So I learned about latching and duck-lips and the football hold, and after a few days, my baby and I figured it out. However, she lost over a pound that first week, and was supplemented with formula from that point on. By supplemented I mean, she would nurse for an hour or so, then slam 4 ounces of formula like she was starving. And in spite of several weeks of pumping and taking Reglan and Blessed Thistle and Fenugreek and considering standing on my head to increase my milk production, I have had to come to terms that I am lactationally challenged.

What has surprised me is how sensitive an issue this has become for me. I’ve felt guilt, I’ve felt sadness, I’ve felt frustration with this reality. I’ve even read comment threads from strangers on baby websites looking for support, or validation, or permission to give it up. What I’ve also felt is resentment that undue pressure is put on women like me--that if I can’t breast feed my own child, I have no other option than to hit the grocery store shelves in shame. Never mind that my clean, sober, nonmedicated, nonsmoking, healthy eater lactating neighbor is soaking her socks every time a child cries across the room. I think it’s interesting that womankind will allow this precious and ample resource get pumped-and-dumped, and choose to financially support a formula industry instead of each other.

In my mind, there is a village. In this village, wet nursing is not an elitist, class dividing, oppressive, perverse, unsafe, vilified practice that it seems to be everywhere else across time and culture. In this pre-formula village, if a woman like me was at risk of her child starving on the teets, help would be available. Maybe women like me don’t make enough breast milk for a reason. Maybe it means we’re meant to do something else. And in this village, this reality is no big deal, because there are plenty of women who are more than happy to siphon off their leftovers.

Sometimes I’m not sure what kind of feminist I am. Maybe I’m a neo-feminist, maybe I’m not a feminist at all. I believe in selective reproductive and paternal rights for men. I believe women in the workplace have just as much to fear from other women as they do from men. And I believe that the first woman or group of women who open an organic, local, fair-trade, certified-safe breast milk store will make a fortune sellin’ that liquid gold. Onward!


Nancy Goodman, LPC is taking her lessons from the universe and taking it easy. Fumbling Toward Serenity currently runs every other week. goodnanc@yahoo.com, 406-3234. http://vocatusidaho.blogspot.com.