Although there are documented cases of post-menopausal women managing to work up the wherewithal to breastfeed an adopted child, that accomplishment is limited to a darned small percentage of the older adoptive parent population.

(Not as small as the group of breast feeding fathers I wrote about a while back, but still in the little numbers.)

This article on pacifiers, interesting in its own right and in agreement with my personal take on the slobbery suckers, leads to a look into the history of baby-pleasing substitutes for the breast.

This site gives a history of bottles, pap feeders and such through the ages that may frighten the life out of non-lactating modern-day mothers.

Seems babies with no breast milk to rely on were fed all sorts of things ... and soy milk is not on the list of ancient substitutes.

What would life be for us older adoptive moms if our options for nourishing our children were limited to strips of rag knotted around grains, bread, meat, fish or bits of juicy fat? Even with the added attraction of milk, brandy or laudanum (a relaxing combination of opium and alcohol), a wad of bloody beef would not be something most of us would be offering our new arrivals.

Even as late as the Victorian era in England, infant mortality rates stood at about two of ten infants living until the age of two-years-old. Those babies without benefit of a breastfeeding mother, or the very popular option of wet nurse, were often offered an alternative that although marketed as, "The Princess" or "The National" were eventually, and finally, known as "The killer".

Designed with a glass tube and stopper, a length of Indian rubber tubing that stopped at a bone mouth shield and rubber nipple was impossible to clean, so ended up contaminating babies with all sorts of fatal nasties.

As somebody marketing another nasty has been known to say, we've come a long way, baby.


If you're interested in looking into the possibility of breastfeeding an adopted child, the process needs to begin well in advance, especially for those of us a bit past our 'breast-before' date. Faith, our Hoping to Adopt Blogger, recently posted a series on adoptive breastfeeding that starts here. Here's some information on adoptive breast feeding, and an article about inducing lactation.