Mary Lincoln Extra Credit Questions

[AussieMick]

Not having been a mother (!!!), its an effort to put myself in Mary's place. But it seems an extraordinary thing to do. I know that wet-nursing did sometimes happen. But I'd always thought that it was where a woman who was extremely poor and had recently had her own baby (which had perhaps died, but not necessarily) and she basically "rented" out her own breast-feeding capability to another new mother who was unable to feed her own baby. Queen Victoria apparently found the idea of feeding her babies revolting so she hired a wet-nurse.

But anyone (male or female) that has had a baby knows how demanding they are. I suppose Mary was not breast-feeding young Dallman quite as often as Tad (in other words throughout the day and night) ... but even so the effort would have been considerable. There would also have been (for me anyway and maybe stupidly) the thought that she was putting her own child at some risk through cross-infection and maybe her own baby was not getting as much milk (ok, thats stupid ... but still)... well, its quite a thing to have done.