I wonder if this law is still "on the books" in Maryland?  I was just reading an
article about the history of wet-nursing, and found this interesting
paragraph:   (page 7 of article
at:  http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2005/1_33/56027319/p7/article.jhtml?term=

"Physicians readily acknowledged that the hiring of a private wet nurse usually
meant a rich baby survived at the expense of a poor baby...    ....A New York
doctor who had seen many "a wet-nurse's starved baby" die charged that
"artificial feeding in institutions is the unavoidable outcome of wet-nursing in
private families." He proposed national legislation mandating that any woman
working as a private wet nurse be allowed to nurse two children, her own and her
employer's.(62) But the only state that did anything about the situation was
Maryland, where the legislature passed a law in 1916 forbidding the separation
of a mother and baby during the first six months of a baby's life. Between 1915
and 1921, Maryland reduced the death rate of babies born to unwed mothers from
one out of three to one out of eight.  The United States Children's Bureau
attributed the decrease in mortality to the likelihood that the law - in
requiring that unwed mothers and their babies be kept together - increased
breastfeeding rates.(63)"

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