A mum-of-two has breastfed 12 children – including her own daughter until she was six.
Lee Moffitt, 26, and her sister Amy Sylvia, 30, both nurse each other’s babies – something they find both practical and special.
But as well as feeding her niece Terra, one, Lee has also nursed the children of several friends.
They include infants she has babysat for and babies of women she has met at a group for local mums.
Breast-fed by her mum Michelle Cannon, 48, until her fifth birthday, Lee always felt it was the most natural way of nurturing children.
When she had her first daughter, Rose, now eight, in February 2008 she decided she’d allow her to choose when she’d stop suckling.
She said: “I left it up to Rose, to decide when she wanted to stop.”
Lee’s husband, IT technician Joseph, 25, is supportive and she has convinced him that wet nursing is “amazing.”
In the last eight years, Lee has only had one month off breastfeeding in September 2014 .
“Being a wet nurse creates an amazing bond with children and helps with the primal bond you have with other women, allowing you to share in motherhood,” Lee, of Orlando, Florida, USA, said.
“Even with children I’ve only breastfed once, I feel touched that I’ve helped them grow and feel motherly towards them.
“Rose started weaning off the breast at around the age of four, but it was a slow process until she stopped completely.”
Lee said it took her a month to get “settled into nursing,” as she found it painful and had cracked nipples, but then she breastfed Rose until she was “a little past six years old.”
“That’s the age when children don’t latch on anymore, because their adult teeth have started to grow,” Lee said. “Therefore, I’ve always viewed it as the natural cut off age.”
The World Health Organisation gives a guided breastfeeding age of “up to two years or beyond,” but Lee said “that’s just an average.”
She added: “It’s not tiring because at that age, they don’t feed as much as babies, it’s just a comfort suckle.
“I remember my breastfeeding relationship with my mum, and now I have such a strong bond with her.
“I knew that’s what I wanted with my daughter, and I absolutely have a closer bond with Rose because of breastfeeding her for so long.”
Lee was pregnant with her second daughter, Amaryllis, two, when Rose stopped feeding, but was working as a nanny and breastfeeding the baby she was looking after at the time.
“The baby’s mum couldn’t pump enough milk out to last the whole day while she was working,” Lee recalled. “We became friends and spoke about how wet nursing is a normal thing in some other countries.
“She said to me ‘if you want to nurse my daughter, go for it.’ It was great, because it made putting her to sleep so much easier.”
That wasn’t the first time she’d fed someone else’s child.
Once, when Rose was one and Lee was babysitting, the baby was inconsolable and didn’t want his bottle.
Lee phoned his mum and asked outright if it was okay to breastfeed him, and she got the go-ahead.
“I nursed him and he slept, it was fantastic,” she remembered.
“That’s when I knew if I was ever in that position again, I’d just ask.”
Lee said she feels closer to her niece because she breastfeeds her.
“When you breastfeed you release the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin,” she said.
She has a mums’ group on Facebook, where she advertises herself as a babysitting wet nurse.
She’s also helped mums struggling to breastfeed their babies at a local mothers’ group, by demonstrating and feeding their babies.
“It’s amazing for me to think, ‘this woman that I met two hours ago is fine with me breastfeeding her kid,’” Lee said. “I have had a couple of people check if I’m on medication first, but if I was I wouldn’t offer to nurse anyone’s children.
“They see I’m feeding my own baby, so I guess they trust me.”
She has also had friends breastfeed Amaryllis for her.
Lee has received hateful comments online with people calling her “gross, weird, disgusting and sick.”
“I’ve had perverts saying inappropriate things,” she told. “The problem is some people see breastfeeding as sexual.
“But I get more supportive comments than negative ones.”
A spokesperson for La Leche League GB, said: “There is no research which shows that breastfeeding beyond infancy is in any way harmful.
“On the contrary, breastmilk maintains nutritional value as well emotional benefits however old a baby is and compliments and boosts the immune system.”
On wet nursing, she added: “Throughout history mothers in many cultures have informally shared their breastmilk and at times sharing milk has been lifesaving.
“There are both benefits and risks to wet nursing. Risks can include transmission of certain infectious agents or viruses, some of which may be found in the milk of asymptomatic women, as can medicines and other drugs.
“Some diseases can also be occasionally passed via breast milk of a wet nurse.
“Once a mother is aware of both the benefits and the risks she can make an informed decision on what she feels is going to be best for her baby.”
Mirror.co.uk
