Lisa Marasco told of a midwife in her community with concerns about tandem
nursing.  I would like to paraphrase Regina's priceless quote about Bfing
while sleeping-- if our breasts were only meant to work for the results of
one pregnancy at a time, then we would all dry up with each new pregnancy.
I learned in March at a talk by a Dutch zoo director that kangaroos always
practice tandem nursing.  They ovulate and are impregnated very shortly
after giving birth, and then the embryo goes into a kind of holding state
which lasts until the newborn lets go of its teat for the first time...
usually a matter of many weeks.  When the next baby comes along, it takes a
different teat, and the milk produced by each teat is specifically tailored
to the customer's developmental needs.
I would gently challenge this midwife to produce documentation for her
claims that babies have not gotten enough, to make sure it isn't just an old
husbands' tale.  For me, it goes without saying that the baby has first
dibs, but some mothers find that the kangaroo's solution works for them too,
and unless there is tandem nursing of multiple higher-order multiples going
on, there shouldn't be any problem with keeping things straight.

Rachel Myr
editor, midwife and IBCLC
Kristiansand, Norway
where tandem nursing is rare and kangaroos even rarer

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