Breast is best

2008-09-25 09:58

Georgina Guedes

While I was in London, I watched a BBC documentary called Other People's Breastmilk. It was an interesting exercise in learning about where other people's boundaries are, as well as in exploring my own prejudices.

The programme was predominantly about modern-day wet nurses, although one man who drank breast milk as part of a treatment plan for cancer was also interviewed. The programme was advertised quite intensively in the week running up to its airing, with close up shots of human breasts being milked, so I was quite keen to see what it was all about.

The presenter was Kate Garraway, a television personality who had recently produced, breastfed and weaned her own baby. The show was about how she explored and evolved her own reactions to the different people she met along the way.

The sources of milk

First of all, from my own perspective, I think that the breast milk bank is an amazing organisation that supplies milk from over-productive mothers to babies who desperately need it. Although this is both an adherence to the belief that "breast is best", in some cases, it is absolutely essential that babies get breast milk and nothing else - an intolerance to soy for instance, or in babies with HIV and Aids, it provides them with essential antibodies not found in milk from other sources.

So, I'm definitely fine with the idea of babies borrowing milk from other mothers. That's perfect. I also acknowledge on an intellectual level that it's a bit weird that we think it's okay to give our children cow's milk. We are nothing like cows, and yet we have accepted them as providers of all our dairy.

We come over a bit squicky when people suggest drinking sheep's milk, and if, for instance, I was to try and think about drinking, say, a chimpanzee's milk, my immediate reaction is a negative one - but they are far closer to us in the animal kingdom than four-legged cud-chewers like cows. Someone in the show suggested that it's okay to drink cow's milk because we eat cows - and that, on the face of it, seemed barbaric to me.

But, for whatever reason, cow's milk is what we drink, and they've been so programmed into our consciousnesses as our suppliers that when I try to change my thinking about them, I come up against a big blank nothing - like asking me not to eat fruit because it comes from trees. Milk comes from cows, end of story.

A milk love fest

I don't think it was the concept of drinking breast milk from another person that was a problem for me, as much as the idea of someone else suckling another person's child that really got my mouth puckering up. Wet nurses were fine in The Mists of Avalon, but somehow in a modern-day apartment, a wet-child minder just made me feel a bit strange.

In all of this, I don't judge any of these people. In fact, I was surprised by my own reaction because I consider myself to be fairly open-minded about most things. I was also amazed by the open-mindedness of the presenter who on two occasions in the course of the show, tried someone else's breast milk as part of a discussion.

Perhaps my reaction was in part due to a sense that breastfeeding is an intimate bonding experience between a mother and a child. It's not necessarily about where the milk comes from, but more to do with the physical contact. The people interviewed were adamant that there was no confusion for the children - they knew who their mothers were, but when their mothers went back to work and other people took on the role of breastfeeding, the babies were still able to get the benefits from human milk.

One quite large child even crawled across to the presenter's lap and asked to be able to have a suck from her - unfortunately the dairy was closed.

Sometimes it's OK

There was one instance of two sisters who had children of around the same age, who one day decided to see what would happen if they swapped babies. The babies didn't seem to mind, and the two, very similar sisters, now have a situation where they calmly share breastfeeding. This story didn't bother me quite as much as some others, perhaps because the sisters are family to each other's children, or because there's a beautiful intimacy that exists between them, rather than a nipple-for-hire arrangement.

The other story that I thought was quite beautiful was one of a woman who was preparing to adopt a baby, and through a process of hormone treatment and suction was able to breastfeed her baby when it arrived - allowing them to bond in that special way.

The show was concluded with Kate Garraway offering a group of people a selection of tasty snacks all prepared with human milk. Some of her guests were willing and happy to try, but some, most notably her husband, refused flat out.

Kate's analysis at the end of the programme was that her mind had been opened to the concept of other people's milk - she'd ended up drinking the stuff, after all - but that she still didn't think that she would ever be comfortable with someone else feeding her child, because she was too possessive of the bonding. She did say, though, that she thought she'd manage to breastfeed someone else's child, if the necessity arose.

Having gone on the journey with her, I must say that I tend to agree with her take on the issue, although I couldn't stop my reaction of wrinkled nose and puckered lips when confronted with the idea of strawberries and human cream.

Georgina Guedes is a freelance journalist. She hates it when stationery stops sell gift boxes or wrapping paper with codes and prices on sticky tags that rip the paper when they are removed.

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