Eliciting Milk
A woman can only act as a wet-nurse if she is lactating. It was once believed that a wet-nurse must have recently undergone childbirth. This is not necessarily true, as regular breast suckling can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion. Some adoptive mothers have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump so that they could feed an adopted infant.
Dr Gabrielle Palmer states:
There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously (known as 'tandem feeding')... some women could theoretically be able to feed up to five babies.
Read more about this topic: Wet Nurse
Famous quotes containing the word milk:
“A cow does not know how much milk it has until the milkman starts working on it. Then it looks round in surprise and sees the pail full to the brim. In the same way a writer has no idea how much he has to say till his pen draws it out of him. Thoughts will then appear on the paper that he is amazed to find that he possessed. “How brilliant!” he says to himself. “I had no idea I was so intelligent.” But the reader may not be so im pressed.”
—Gerald Branan (1894–1987)