Henya mentioned the custom in Russia 46 years ago of avoiding giving
colostrum and expressing it off and discarding it. This was common in many
European countries since at  least the late-Medieval period. Some
influential ancient texts from Greco-Roman medical authors, who were copied
or cited by later writers, claimed that colostrum was harmful and
mothers shouldn't put a baby to breast for a period of a few days. Soranus
recommended waiting 20 days before the mother breastfed her newborn. (See
translation of Soranus by Oswei Tempkin, 1991) A wet-nurse or neighbour who
hadn't recently given birth was to be used in the interim, or if no one
was available, honey could be given, with or without goat's milk, and after
a few days the mother was to express her breasts before attaching her baby.

Advice of this sort was usually written for households who could afford to
follow it and had the resources, but there is evidence across the
centuries that infant-feeding recommendations weren't necessarily followed.
One example of 18th-century advice was to give the baby nothing in the
first few days, but mothers and those around her tended to "stuff" babies
with a variety of pre-lacteal foods (Cadogan, 1748). Mostly, when colostrum
was withheld, the mother's breasts were relieved by other women or puppies
(Soranus, 1991; Prulen, 2007; Thorley & Sioda, 2016).

Henya's example from her own childhood reminds us that custom isn't
immutable and unchanging, and this is one custom that has changed in many
parts of the world. Many of us have seen great changes in maternity
practices in hospitals, e.g. no longer the compulsory bottle of artificial
formula for all babies, even if the mother objected, as in 1960s
Australia when my first baby was born. Many Lactnetters have been part of
the change, influencing it at grassroots level or higher, and others of you
will be agents for change in the future as there is still a lot to be done.
It is possible to be respectful of culture while working for change.

To return to the subject of the withholding of colostrum - In England,
while this practice was rife in the 18th century, it eventually died out in
the second or third decades of the 19th century. (Smith FE. The People's
Health. London: Croom Helm, 1979).

See also Thorley V, Sioda T. Selection criteria for wet-nurses:
ancient recommendations that survived across time. Breastfeeding
Review 2016; 24(3): 13-24

I shall be going "nomail" later this week because of other commitments.
However, I shall be happy to discuss these snippets of history, or provide
references, privately by email.

Virginia

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA
Private Practice IBCLC (Ipswich/ Brisbane area, Australia)
Medical Historian

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