I breastfeed my girl of three AND my client’s toddler. . . what’s weird about that?
After that Twitter storm, a British childminder speaks out
HEALTH CORRESPONDENT IT was a picture that sparked a frenzied debate and divided opinion around the world. When Jessica Anne Colletti, 26, posted a photograph of herself breastfeeding her 16-month-old son and a friend’s 18-month-old boy on Facebook last week, it drew scorn on social media, with some describing the practice – known as wet nursing – as ‘gross’ and ‘unnatural’.
Some said the two children were too old to be breastfed and that Mrs Colletti was an ‘exhibitionist’.
But supporters claimed she was standing up for the rights of women to breastfeed publicly.
The picture, which appeared on a parenting section of Facebook, was taken in America, where wet nursing is a growing phenomenon.
But now The Mail on Sunday has discovered that a small but growing band of British women regularly wet nurse other mothers’ children.
Among them is Laura Merryweather, exclusively pictured here feeding her own daughter Abbie, then aged three, and a friend’s oneyear-old boy in a Starbucks cafe.
She took Abbie and the boy, who she was looking after in her professional capacity as a childminder, into the busy cafe accompanied by a friend. She sat near a window and started feeding the two youngsters.
She told the MoS: ‘We were in Starbucks having a drink and a snack and the little boy got tired and crotchety and couldn’t settle.
‘Abbie was already having milk from me, and when he saw that he realised that he wanted it too.’
‘It’s not particularly easy to discretely breastfeed when you have got two of them. I was a bit nervous, being in a public place, but I knew it was my right to breastfeed there.
‘I wasn’t in the best seat for being discreet – it was right by the door with a great big window in front of me. But I thought, “Sod it. I’ve just got to do this, because he needs it.”’
She did not use a breastfeeding drape during the outing to the cafe in Farnham, Surrey, near where she lives. ‘You would just be under a tent; it would look ridiculous,’ she said. But she added that she hardly received a glance from other customers, while a waiter brought her a glass of water without a word.
‘I was daunted to start with, but it wasn’t a scary experience in the end. It was actually fine and natural. I remember Abbie putting her arm around the little boy when they were feeding together. It was very, very sweet,’ she said. Her friend then took a picture.
Mrs Merryweather, 37, said she started wet nursing after becoming a childminder. The children she looks after tend to be from women she met through La Leche League, a breastfeeding organisation, who have gone back to work. She has breastfed three children besides her own daughter, and bottled her own milk for a fourth.
In all the cases, the children’s mothers had raised the subject of wet nursing with her, but she stressed: ‘It’s not like it’s part of my childminding contract.’
She added: ‘I understand that most people think wet nursing is weird because it’s not visible to the major- ity of people. But I don’t see it that way at all, and I find it a bit sad that it’s seen as strange or abnormal.
‘In the past, wet nurses were also a common thing in Britain – the nanny was often the wet nurse.
‘Maybe it’s seen as an old-fashioned thing nowadays, but I don’t see why, when it makes children’s lives comfortable if they are away from their mum.’