New moms are inundated with information about feeding their babies. There’s breastfeeding, there’s pumping, there’s formula, there’s donor milk.
But there is another method that is not often discussed publicly but still happens quietly: wet nursing.
Before the invention of infant formula and feeding bottles in the 19th century, mothers who couldn’t — or didn’t want to — nurse their babies turned to wet nurses, women who breastfeed children who are not their own.
Would you let another woman breastfeed your child? Would you breastfeed someone else’s child?
TODAY.com talked to three women who shared their personal stories about wet nursing to demonstrate why and how women are wet nursing today. The practice may not be as uncommon as you think.
Her mother breastfeed her baby
Arkansas therapist Terri Albert didn’t plan on having someone else breastfeed her son. It just … happened.
“My mom breastfed my son. How’s that for a hook?” Albert asked in a TikTok video she posted in July 2025.
Albert gave birth to her son when she was 18 years old. When the baby was just two months old, Albert started classes at a college that was almost two hours from home. Her infant lived with her mother and 2-year-old sister full time. Albert lived near school during the week and traveled home on the weekends.
After Albert left, the baby went on bottle strike and refused to eat. Albert’s mom tried everything to encourage him to drink from a bottle, but he screamed for hours. Ultimately, Albert’s mom, who was still breastfeeding her own toddler, decided to breastfeed her grandson. Albert found out about it after the fact. Though she was surprised, she was also grateful.
“He was a spoiled little baby,” Albert laughs. “He did not want that artificial nipple. He just did not want it, and he was making himself sick.”
Since wet nursing worked so well for the baby, Albert’s mother continued to feed him whenever Albert was away at school. Now 24 and in basic training for the Army, Albert’s son brushes off jokes his grandmother makes about breastfeeding him.
For her part, Albert hasn’t been shy about sharing her story, even though it sometimes elicits shock from people.
“My child’s needs come first and they’re always going to come first,” she says. “If it ever came to that point to that point to where I had needed her to do it again, I would be totally open to it.”
She breastfed someone else’s baby
In 2018, Canadian mom and registered nurse Natalie LeClaire received a message that another mother in her community was undergoing medical treatment that would prohibit her from breastfeeding her 14-month-old, who was still nursing regularly.
“She asked if I would be willing to help her out,” LeClaire recalls. “I was a new mom at the time, and I was very pro breastfeeding. And I was like, ‘Absolutely.'”
LeClaire breastfeed the child just a few times while his mother was unable to nurse him herself. She says the nursing sessions were less about nutrition and more to help him “remember how to latch,” she shares.
“You don’t really hear of modern-day wet nursing,” LeClaire adds. “So it was exciting to check that off my mom bucket list.”
Her sisters breastfed her baby
Hope Donovan, a New Jersey teacher, struggled to produce enough milk to feed her two boys.
“When I was much younger, I had a breast reduction, which can make some of your milk production difficult,” she says. “I was triple-feeding: I nursed, then I pumped, then I fed him a bottle, just so that he could have enough.”
One of Donovan’s sisters had given birth just a few months before. As an overproducer, she was able to gift Donovan plenty of frozen breastmilk. But that’s not all — when Donovan visited her extended family in New Orleans, her sister would occasionally breastfeed Donovan’s son directly.
Donovan says there were “plenty of times” when she would be on an outing and got to play “the cool aunt” with her nieces and nephews while her sister stayed home to oversee the babies’ naps. “She would babysit, and she’d be like, ‘If he wakes up, I’m just going to feed him to put him back to sleep so I don’t have to call you to rush home,'” Donovan recalls.
A third sister was also breastfeeding her own baby at the same time. When all three families got together and babies cried, one of the three breastfeeding moms would feed them. Donvan’s sisters work in the medical field and placed a great deal of importance on breastmilk; they wanted to make sure all the babies in the family had their fill — who the milk came from was less important.
“It took a load off of my brain and body because I had this medical thing where I couldn’t produce as much as my sisters — or as much as (my son) really needed,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t have to do much formula and saved money.”
Conveniently, when Donovan had a second child, her sisters did too, so they once again supplied her with frozen and fresh breastmilk as circumstances allowed.
Donovan, who is “super close” with her sisters, jokes, “I wouldn’t have been sourcing breastmilk from neighbors because I refused to use formula. But this was offered with love from family.”
Is wet nursing safe?
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breastfeeding your baby for at least 6 months. But if you cannot breastfeed your baby, should you consider finding someone else to do it?
Bryn Pearson, a lactation consultant and the Mothers’ Milk Bank coordinator at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, cautions, “There are not necessarily any safeguards in place to ensure the person sharing the milk lives a healthy lifestyle and is free from disease, or that their collection and storage practices are safe.”
While milk banks screen donors and process the milk to make sure it’s safe, there are more risks associated with wet nursing, especially if you don’t know the lactating woman well.
In the end, Pearson says, “It is up to parents to decide what method of feeding makes the most sense for their situation.”
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