Rachel,
  I have just completed some fascinating research and written a paper  
on milk kinship. In Islam, and other cultures as well, when a woman  
nurses a child not her own, she becomes the child's milk mother and  
her biological children and her milk child become "milk siblings"  
Milk kinship relationships are similar to blood kin relationships in  
that milk kin and their immediate family members cannot marry, they  
dress and act toward one another as siblings and favor one another in  
business relationships.
This also impacts milk banking and donating milk. For example,  
whereas we in the west feel that anonymity between donor and  
recipient is important for a variety of reasons, among Moslems it is  
important to know who the milk mother will be since family relations  
for several generations will be affected.

Naomi Bar-Yam

On Jan 31, 2006, at 9:00 AM, LACTNET automatic digest system wrote:

> I recently encountered a Somali woman whose baby was born at 33  
> weeks by
> emergency CS for cord prolapse.  She vehemently refused to allow  
> her baby to
> get donor milk when approached about it in the recovery area after her
> surgery under general anesthesia.  She requested a clean container and
> promptly expressed enough colostrum to feed the baby then and  
> there, and
> continued to do so from then on.  I removed her staples on day 5  
> and asked
> her then about her attitude to donor milk, because I was curious.  She
> explained that a woman who provides milk for a baby, becomes its  
> mother, and
> her baby already had a mother, namely herself.  "One baby, two  
> mothers, not
> good!" was her explanation.  "If I die, and of course I hope that I  
> don't,
> insh'allah, then my baby would need another mother.  But I am  
> alive."  Then
> she added as an afterthought, "Some men want to have two wives.  I  
> don't
> like that either."


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