Outsourcing Breast Milk

They say breast milk is the perfect food for baby's mind and body. Studies
show that children who nurse may be healthier and happier and, if they
breast-feed for longer than seven months, have a higher IQ. Equally important,
many believe, is the intense bond that develops between mother and
child.
Which is one reason most American moms don't want to share the
experience with anyone else. Yet wet-nursing (hiring a woman to breast-feed your
baby), which most of the Western world abandoned in the 19th century, is making
a minor comeback among young moms. So is cross-nursing, in which mothers
breast-feed one another's babies. Both reflect several cultural trends: more
U.S. babies--upwards of 70%--are breast-fed than at any time in at least 50
years, more women work outside the home, and more young women undergo breast
surgery. Advocates argue that milk sharing lets women be good moms while
fulfilling other goals. Says Natalia Chang, 29, who has cross-nursed with her
San Jose, Calif., neighbor: Breast milk is "a communal commodity around
here."
Not everyone is comfortable with this freewheeling baby feeding. Milk
banks, which sell bottled breast milk, already make some people squirm; the idea
of physically breast-feeding a child not your own evokes even deeper taboos.
Rhonda Shaw, a sociologist who studies shared nursing in New Zealand, where the
trend is also up, says many confuse "adult meanings of eroticism with breast
feeding ... Sometimes people associate a woman breast-feeding another woman's
baby with pedophilia." Even the pro-nursing group La Leche League has concerns
about milk sharing because, in addition to helpful immunities and antibodies,
viruses can be passed through breast milk.
But women who share milk say it's
good for babies and moms. Lorna Medina, 30, who stayed home in Tucson, Ariz.,
after the birth of her child, also nursed the infant of her working sister for a
year. Medina says it created a unique bond with her niece, a preemie who needed
breast milk to grow. Chang says cross-nursing brought her closer to her
neighbor. "It takes female friendship to another level. You're trusting another
person to nurture your child," she says. And she adds that since she and her
husband don't live near family, "it's also a way of building that village or
community that a lot of us crave."
Even if you accept that cross-nursing is
for the collective good, wet nurses magnify the discomfort that many people
already feel about the wealthy employing less advantaged women to do domestic
duties. That's why the few women who hire wet nurses--mostly because they have
adopted, have had breast implants or reductions or have high-powered
careers--keep it a secret, for fear of being judged bad mothers. Still, Robert
Feinstock, who owns CertifiedHouseholdStaffing.com a Los Angeles--based agency that
supplies wet nurses nationwide, says demand has steadily risen in the past four
years, even though the standard fee of $1,000 a week is more than the average
nanny gets.
Brenda (whose last name is withheld to protect her clients'
privacy), 42, has wet-nursed 10 babies in the past seven years partly to help
send her own two kids to college. She has mulled over the social implications of
her work--because she's black and eight of the families she has worked for are
white. "A friend asked me, Don't you feel like you're the mammy?" she recalls.
But she finds her job fulfilling, and sometimes amusing. "If you're someplace
with the family and the baby starts to pull at your blouse or put his hand in
your bra, that can be embarrassing," she says, laughing.

Uhhh a $1000 US a week? Sign me up! I found the whole article really interesting.