Breastfeeding Children You Do Not Know

Would you breastfeed a child you do not know? How about a number of such children? Breastfeeding in the United States is considered a very personal process and as such is only between a mother...

Would you breastfeed a child you do not know? How about a number of such children? Breastfeeding in the United States is considered a very personal process and as such is only between a mother and her own offspring. In centuries past and in different cultures to this very day, breastfeeding children other than their own are realistic situations. In the old days a woman who would breastfeed another woman’s child, usually her employer’s child, would be called a wet nurse. In close-knit tribal cultures it is not unusual for one woman to nurse multiple children, some of whom may not be her own. Women take turns looking after the children and seeing to their nutritional needs while the other women go about their tasks for the family, community, or village.

Breastfeeding children you do not know can still be a possibility today! Moreover, you do not have to become a member of a far away tribe, but instead may do so simply with a breast pump. Whereas breast pumps enable American women to return to work and at the same time continue offering their breast milk to their little ones, in other places these very same pumps are tools of desperate survival. For example, did you know that in the hospital close to you there is a breast milk depository where healthy moms may deposit their breast milk for infants who might have been born prematurely and whose mothers cannot provide the milk which is laced with antibodies and all the substances the little one needs for survival?

The simple act of donating breast milk may help feed children you will never meet and probably never get to know. For their parents, your breast milk is a vital component in the continued health of the children. Yet breastfeeding children you do not know can extend far beyond the borders of your city. In Africa where HIV positive babies are daily occurrences, pumped breast milk from a healthy source may be the difference between life and death. Sometimes abandoned at birth, the fact that breast milk will help an infant to flourish is well known to hospital personnel, but healthy donors are few and far between, usually conserving whatever milk they have to offer for family members and friends.

International breast milk donors are therefore enlisted to make up for the shortage moms’ groups are routinely approached with information on breastfeeding, pumping and storing breast milk, and also donating overages on a consistent basis. International helping organizations educate women in affluent western countries how their breast milk can make a difference in the lives of children they will never meet, ensuring that new donors line up on a daily basis. It is not uncommon nowadays to run into a mother who is still pumping breast milk, but not for her own children but instead for children who need breastfeeding to survive, but have nobody willing or able to perform this simple tasks of survival for them. Could you see yourself breastfeeding children you do not know?

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