Jeanette,

I would be inclined not to give my opinion but to outline the
concerns/benefits. In  the first case my opinon is that the biggest concern
is dealing with authorities that don't understand and the second biggest
would be the possibility of disease transmission. The latter is relatively
easily solved with regular testing the former is more difficult. Many women
breastfeed foster babies without official sanction and risk having the child
removed however, getting approval to breastfeed a foster baby is possible in
some places.
On the benefits side a foster baby wouuld have all the positive effects of
breastfeeding that any child gets (and I'm couching this in terms of benefit
rather than cost of not breastfeeding simply because breastfeediing a foster
child is not the norm, in fact very rare) but in addition many children in
foster care have histories of abuse/neglect, hospitalisation or maternal
drug use that have left emotional wounds, some quite severe. Breastfeeding
of such children can greatly aid in the emotional healing of these children.
Some of the stories I have heard and the things I have seen in this regard
are quite amazing!  Why would you deny a hurt child something that can help
heal them because they are not the 'real' child of the mother caring for
them?

In the second case you present I simply can't see the issue of the mother of
a child providing milk to the other mother of a child if that is what she
wants to do.

Karleen Gribble
Australia

> However - I have recently been asked as an IBCLC my opinion in the
> following cases:
>
>        A foster mother wants to breastfeed a foster child=2E
>
>        An adoptive mother is offered milk by the surrogate mother who
will=
>
> be delivering her baby=2E
>
> What is your response?  What are YOUR concerns? =20

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