page_title: Wet nurse
section_title: Eliciting milk
hierarchical_section_title: Wet nurse / Eliciting milk
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: statuette d’une parclose représentant une femme qui presse son sein pour en recueillir le lait dans un bol (satire d'une nourrice). - Stalles de la Basilique Saint-Materne (XVIe siècle) - Walcourt (Belgique). English: statuette of a parclose representing a woman who presses her breast to collect milk in a bowl (a satire nourrice). - Stalls of the Basilica of Saint Materne (XVIth century) - Walcourt (Belgium).
context_page_description: A wet nurse is a woman who breast feeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, or if she is unable or elects not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cultures the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship. Mothers who nurse each other's babies are engaging in a reciprocal act known as cross-nursing or co-nursing. Wetnursing existed in cultures around the world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century.
context_section_description: A woman can only act as a wet-nurse if she is lactating (producing milk). It was once believed that a wet-nurse must have recently undergone childbirth. This is not necessarily the case, 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.
caption: Statuette of a parclose representing a woman who presses her breast to collect milk in a bowl. – Stalls (16th century) of the Basilica of Saint Materne [fr] (11th century) – Walcourt (Belgium).
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