breastfed my daughter, Darcy, now two, for a year, which was a wonderfully bonding and intimate time.
However, when I learned that more and more mums are asking other women to breastfeed their children for them, I just couldn’t get my head around it.
Why would I want another woman to put their nipple in my child’s mouth? It was all very disturbing.
Women across the world happily give their children to other mums to feed, but I still have problems with it.
Breastfeeding is hard.
When your breasts start to produce milk, they get enormous – and mine went up to a 30GG.
They were huge spacehoppers, it was like sharing your bed with an extra couple of people.
And your poor baby has to latch on to this beach ball. It’s incredibly painful – for me it was worse than childbirth.
I even once asked my poor father-in-law for cabbage leaves to soothe my cracked nipples.
Why would you want to go through all this for someone else’s baby?
So when I was asked to take part in a show looking at the concept of the modern-day wet nurse, I was fascinated.
Why did new mums do it? Were they lazy? Worried about what it would do to their figures? Or did they just want to get back to work?
But while filming the programme, I’ve had my views challenged by the pro-wet-nurse brigade. One woman suggested my motivation to breastfeed Darcy myself stemmed from the fact I was worried about being rejected by my child if I didn’t do it.
Another wanted to go back to work, but didn’t want her baby to be fed formula – so a wet nurse was a practical solution.
I witnessed a group of women in Nottingham who were cross-feeding, passing their babies round to each other to be fed, and part of me did think it was quite a sisterly thing to do.
One woman was very ill after she gave birth and was happy for someone else to feed her child, while another was struggling to breastfeed and was using the group to learn techniques from others.
I loved the way they were taking breastfeeding and making it work for 2008.
The more I spoke to these women, the more I understood why they were so convinced that breast milk was best and that they would do whatever it took to make sure their babies got it.
I began to realise that this stuff we feed our children is kind of a miracle. It can protect against asthma and allergies, as well as keeping colds, ear infections and pneumonia at bay.
It’s been an enlightening and emotional journey.
Now, I would gladly breastfeed someone else’s baby if its life depended on it – something I would never have said before.
But I still have issues with the thought of another woman breastfeeding my child, although if my baby was stranded on a desert island and it was a life-or-death situation, then who knows.
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