My Cross Nursing Experience

Mom Topics - Breastfeeding

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What is it like to take another mother's small babe in your arms and put him or her to your breast? Breastfeeding Editor, Jodi Cleghorn, shares her experiences of breastfeeding her friend's four week-old son and what it meant for them all.

Taking tiny Kynan in my arms for the first time was a nerve wracking experience -- being entrusted with a baby in this way is enormous and it wasn’t lost on me! I hoped I wasn’t going to be struck down with performance anxiety and not get a letdown. Looking down at Michelle who sat at my feet playing with Dylan and her two-and-half-year-old daughter, I knew how important breastfeeding was for Michelle and my love for her deepened. I could only imagine what it meant to her to pass her tiny son to me and watch him feed at my breast.

I quickly remembered the frustration and the patience required to get a newborn to attach properly and the sore nipples that came with that. Michelle would look at the attachment in the early days so she got an idea of what his attachment should look like on her breast. Kynan got the idea quickly of what would happen if he sucked strongly and was able to accommodate my large milk supply without too much trouble.

Our cross nursing experience lasted two weeks. Each afternoon I went to Michelle’s house and shared two huge milky breasts with Kynan. I was always mindful to ensure that Dylan hadn’t fed recently so there was bountiful milk. Dylan seemed to intuitively know I was doing something important and would only begin to cry and want me when Kynan had finished both breasts. He was at an age where he was beginning to eat solid foods so missing out on one breastfeed didn’t matter as much as it would have if he had been younger (one of the reasons that the La Leche League doesn’t encourage cross feeding).

Michelle and I went together to the lactation consultant the following week and were overjoyed to discover that Kynan had regained his birth weight. I also got some more tips from the lactation consultant to help Michelle with her own feeding. By the second week he was 250g heavier.  

While the age difference, and thus the difference in quality and nutrient mix of the milk wasn’t perfect (the ideal would have been to have had a mother with a newborn baby, too) it worked for Michelle and Kynan. Part of me believes that it was more than just milk -- there were definite psychological dimensions to it and Michelle told me years later that she would have given up breastfeeding had it not been for my help and my belief in her ability to do it.

Those two weeks were enough to get things back on track Michelle and Kynan. It didn’t solve all of the breastfeeding issues but it got Michelle through the roughest period, when she was most vulnerable to turning to formula. I benefited as well as I was struggling with motherhood at the time and those afternoons spent in Michelle’s lounge room, with the sun streaming in and my milk flowing out, were the happiest parts of my day.

We went on to share breastfeeding as our boys got older (though Michelle had to wait until Dylan was two before he asked her if he could have a ‘boobie’) and the breastfeeding bond that Kynan and I had, enabled Michelle to go back to work one day a week and for me to care for him and his older sister. Our breastfeeding history remains a cornerstone of our friendship, and Michelle and I are proud of the deep bond our two sons share as ‘breast brothers,’ or freres au lait as the French term it.

It reminds me that the failure of a mother to breastfeed should not a personal strike against her, rather a failure of the community as a whole to support her in this most precious and important of jobs.

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