The Invitation to Cross Nurse

One of the greatest things a woman can do is support a new mother’s efforts to breastfeed. Breastfeeding editor, Jodi Cleghorn shares her experiences assisting a friend in an uncommon way.

When my close friend, Michelle, was pregnant, I told her I would support her in any way possible to breastfeed her baby. At the time, I was thinking of bringing over meals, brewing fenugreek tea, giving her massages, and helping with her two-year-old daughter so she could get some sleep or perhaps do the laundry.

But the help some new mothers need goes far beyond this.

I knew how important breastfeeding this baby was to her. She’d put her six-week daughter on formula after a month and a half of continual problems (including discovering via the lactation consultant that her daughter had a broken clavicle from birth!), and an imminent move back to Queensland from California looming ahead of her. This time, she was determined that she would breastfeed.

At some point, I must have mentioned I’d happily feed her baby if she ever needed it — my supply was always abundant and I was often good naturedly teased about being a jersey cow. It may seem to many mothers a weird or sacrilegious offer, but to me it seemed sensible in a demand and supply sense. It was an offer that I had always hoped, deep in my heart, would come my way if there was ever a reason that I was unable to breastfeed my son.

Like so many women, breastfeeding didn’t come naturally or easily for Michelle, just like the first time.  Without post-natal support from a midwife to assist with attachment and breastfeeding in the first week after birth, the problems she and her son experienced rapidly spiraled into something more serious.

At four weeks, she resorted to seeing a highly recommended private lactation consultant. It was something she had put off because her husband had just lost his job and it was an expense they were trying to avoid (in Australia, like many other industrialised countries, lactation consultants are not covered by government health care schemes).

The lactation consultant found that there were attachment problems and coupled with it weight issues which meant he wasn’t suckling effectively enough to stimulate her milk supply. He needed to fix his attachment and to put on weight. The first was a matter of correcting each time he went to the breast, but the second was more difficult. Michelle didn’t want to return to line feeding (as she had done with her daughter). The lactation consultant asked if she had a friend who could help.  

Michelle took the second option and telephoned me.

I won’t deny that I was nervous when I arrived at her front door that first afternoon, but there had never been a doubt or hesitation that I would do this for her. I reassured her that I was happy to be supporting her in this way — and very honoured. I checked again with her that this was what she wanted to do. I understood the enormous implications, emotional and psychological, of another woman putting your baby to her breast. I wasn’t sure how I would have coped seeing another woman breastfeeding my son at that age. She assured me that she was at peace with the decision.

My plan had been to get my seven-month-old son, Dylan, to feed from Michelle while I breastfeed Kynan. (I was naïve at that point that he would be accommodating of such an arrangement!). Dylan was an effective feeder and I knew he would stimulate Michelle’s milk supply. But he wasn’t interested in going to her breast and we didn’t push the issue — he was old enough to know that it wasn’t his mother’s breast. I’ve since read the La Leche League’s information on cross feeding, and it points out that there can be psychological consequences for older babies who are cross nursed.

Next week, in part two of my story, I share what it was actually like to breastfeed someone else’s baby and what it meant for all our relationships.

Jodi Cleghorn is a mother, writer and editor, feminist, social geographer and Type-A Mom’s Breastfeeding editor. Jodi is the co-author of Reclaiming Sex After Childbirth: the survival guide with Annie Evett and co-owner of the Reclaim Sex After Birth website. Jodi lives in Brisbane, Australia with her partner Dave, son Dylan, fish Bo and Keats the cat.

Photo – Breastfeeding at nine weeks copyright Jodi Cleghorn.

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