Hospitals pressured to end free baby formula

[Mariana]

57. About nursing mothers sharing their milk

with other women's babies - of course it was common, and not all that long ago, either. I've seen many references to it in literature. In Gone With the Wind, for example, Dilcey feeds Melanie's son when Melanie can't do so, and no one thinks it's strange or unusual. If Dilcey (or another wet nurse) hadn't been available, the boy would have starved to death. Would Mitchell have written that into the story if it wasn't something that went on in real life?

But, a woman did that in Oklahoma a few years ago, because there was a hungry child in front of her and she had the means to feed it. It was so weird that it made the news, and what happened? People freaked out over it. It was "gross" and "unsanitary" and "disgusting" and etc, etc. The woman was actually charged with a some "indecency" crime, IIRC, even though it wasn't done in public. I'll grant that she shouldn't have done it without permission, but the reaction was just over the top nutty.

Anyway, even with supplemental feeding from other women (if a mother was lucky and there were other nursing women around), an awful lot of babies died when breastfeeding was the only available means to feed a child - and they still do in some parts of the world. Certainly all of them didn't die from not getting enough food, but I bet a lot of them did.