You say that as if the woman had beat the kid. If that had been the case, I’d say “string her up”. But no, she was trying to feed the child in a manner that wasn’t objectionable to said child.
Q.E.D.: Have you gone insane or something? Cow’s milk is pasteurized and regulated. The milk from a random day care worker is not.
I already stated that I might let another person nurse my child under certain circumstances. I don’t find the idea of it weird or repulsive, and I think you’re being really condescending when you suggest that we object to this because we’re uptight and/or because we don’t understand biology.
Also, the “life is hazardous so it’s pointless to take precautions” argument is too stupid for words.
Q.E.D., using your logic, we shouldn’t vaccinate or use antibiotics at all. We should let the weak die off so they don’t pollute our gene pool.
What if the kid wasn’t hungryy? The article doesn’t say if the nursing even helped console the child. You’re really not making any sense here.
I never said it was pointless to take precautions. Look, you all love your kids and want to protect them. That, too, is perfectly natural–in fact we could not exist without that fact being true. You’re all still missing my point entirely, which is that what the woman in the OP did is not unnatural or even particularly risky (when compared to everyday life).
No. But I will contend we use them far too much. Eventually, some sort of superbug will manage to survive all the antibiotics we throw at it and present a real threat.
I don’t think it was the brightest idea, but I could see some form of punishment being issued. There is the added risk of passing something to the child, and I would think breastfeeding is a very intimate action between a mother and child, and one, at the very least, that should be controlled by the mother and no one else. The day care worker should’ve had permission beforehand.
There is no emoticon suitable for response to a question like that.
At the risk of sounding even more of a breastfeeding Nazi, I wouldn’t be sending my 3 month old to childcare if she/he was being nursed exclusively, so it’s a moot point, for me, anyway.
Yes, I’d press charges, for the reasons my wise and wonderful co-nursers stated. Also, I’d never want anyone to have that level of intimacy with my child.
I don’t think I’d nurse a friend’s baby, unless I was specifically asked and in an emergency (i.e. she was in a tragic accident and her baby didn’t know how to take a bottle).
Frankly, I doubt my own little bebe would actually even latch on to anyone else’s boobie. 
I quite agree.
Oops…I messed that up badly. I hope everyone understands who was being quoted there.
Yikes! The Hand That Rocks The Cradle anyone? I’d press charges regardless of any health issues; it just weirds me out. I agree with Anahita:
It’s interesting to read how people are reacting to this. I wouldn’t have thought I’d be in the minority.
I tihnk this is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen on the board. It seems your outrage comes from the fact that a boobie is a sexual object (to you) so it’s comparable to other sexual objects, such as a penis. Even though the daycare giver was trying to feed the baby, and it had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of sexual gratification at all.
Are you confused because white stuff comes out of both?
FTR, I totally understand other people’s objections to what she did–especially re: viruses and drugs. But to imply that it is comparable to sexual abuse? Absolutely ridiculous.
Frankly, I doubt my own little bebe would actually even latch on to anyone else’s boobie.
Hehe. Sometimes they come out and refuse to latch on to their own mom, much less anyone else 
Yeah, his statement was kinda outlandish, but as a guy I think I can see where he’s coming from. A guy will likely see his mother’s breast and another woman’s breast in pretty different lights. One’s food (I guess, if it’s even thought of at all - I’m starting to creep myself out here), and the other is sex.
I can see how a case can be made in the OP’s story for sexual assault here. This wasn’t an infant on his mother’s breast - this was a strange woman! I don’ t have a problem with the her intentions mitigating the punishment, but I definitely don’t think it should be written-off and forgotten.
For me, it’s a question of real harm vs. potential harm.
If the baby did contract some kind of virus or was exposed to something that did some harm to it as a result, then yes, the full weight of the law (both criminal and civil sides) should be brought to bear, with swiftness.
But I don’t think I could prosecute someone who was doing something that they thought was good for my child that resulted in no harm being done. And there’s no question that nursing is a wonderful means of providing comfort to an unconsolable baby – if the woman was healthy, the unauthorized nursing was certainly better for the child than permitting her to continue to cry until such time as the mother could arrive from work, or until she made herself sick (which would’ve likely exacerbated the situation) or finally fell off to sleep from sheer exhaustion. (I’m a strong opponent of the cry it out idea, obviously.) The caregiver most likely knew that.
The article doesn’t note that the child has suffered any illness or effect from the incident. If not, since the child is not in the woman’s care any longer, I can’t see who benefits from pursuing criminal charges or litigation because in that case, what she did was not harmful in and of itself.
She probably wasn’t lactating, so she therefore the baby didn’t get any of her breastmilk. I say this because I read in another online article a quote from her husband who said she had weaned her own baby about 2 months prior to this incident (cannot find the source article though, sorry).
If this is true and she had weaned her own child then she very likely wasn’t still lactating, and if she wasn’t lactating then I doubt that she produced any milk for the crying baby. He/She probably just suckled at her breast enought to calm down.
IANANM (I Am Not A Nursing Mother) but my wife is/was and I’m under the impression that the well runs dry if not pumped for two months.
Still, it seems like a stupid thing to do and I certainly would be upset as a parent if someone did this to my baby.
I just don’t see that much of a difference. You are sticking part of your body in the mouth of this kid without permisision. Now, ok, a penis is worse than a breast, but they seem like different degrees to mme, which is all to say I am horrified at this woman’s behavior. (And my original post was in response to kambuckta who didn’t see anything wrong with giving the kid a “titty” to suck on.)
Anway, *Q.E.D. I usually agree with your posts, but man you have lost me on this one. Of course there are always risks to children of picking up disease etc. but that doesn’t mean we do nothing about preventing them to the extent that we can.
I don’t have any kids, (can you tell? ) but when I do, I don’t think I am going to want to have them passed around the day care to grab a snack from whatever boob happens to have some breast milk available. It weirds me out!
A finger to suck on, sure. I anticipate that as a normal response - within what I’d expect, and kind of having signed on for once I left my kid there. But I’d expect to be asked before my child nursed off someone else. I’d definitely be concerned, would probably file a complaint (assuming it was a licensed center), and would prosecute if any harm actually happened. I wouldn’t prosecute on the grounds she chose to, but perhaps that was all that would cover it, legally.
And this from someone who donated breastmilk to another mom (me having been tested for HIV with no risk behaviors, being off meds, and keeping the milk frozen for a week to determine if I was coming down with a virus or anything else before handing it off). And following human milk banking protocols for collection. In general, it isn’t considered safe to just up and breastfeed someone else’s child, without following reliable protocols, unless you are in an environment where the benefits outweigh the risks. In this case, I don’t think that was true - calling them to pick up the child would be the ‘last ditch’ reaction, and the risks outweigh the benefits (the child wasn’t starving, even if hungry). I have been called to pick up an inconsolable child, myself.
I don’t agree with the particular charges filed, but I also don’t think that what happened should be ignored. If this woman is a licensed daycare provider, I would say she should have her license suspended for awhile. There are a multitude of health risks involved and I would hate to see people start to think this is an okay thing to do.
For the record, a person who claims to be this woman’s husband has been posting on the Fark message boards saying that the story is untrue, the woman cuddled the baby but did not breastfeed, and the person filing the suit has a grudge against the mother, as does the DA who is prosecuting. So it might be better to keep the question as an abstract, “Is breastfeeding someone else’s kid without permission heinous or not?”
Also, the person in question was not an employee of the daycare center – just another mother who was trying to calm down a baby who was crying.
I hadn't previously realized the level of emotion that mothers attach to the breastfeeding process -- my thought was that if the woman knew that she was healthy (e.g. no risk factors for any of the nastier virii), then I'd see it as a well-meaning social gaffe. Maybe justifying a stern "Don't do that again!", but not the shitstorm that seems to have arisen. (You can tell that they were really reaching when they charge her with outraging public decency and public morals.)It would skeeve me out, but I sure as hell wouldn’t try to get someone JAILED or FINED over it. It was poor judgement, but it wasn’t malevolent. I like Finagle’s term, a well-meaning social gaffe.
If it were a friend of mine who did it, I’d be grateful. I have two friends who have done this for each other’s babies.
I cannot believe someone compared this to sticking a dick in a baby’s mouth. Good christ. A lactating breast is not a sexual organ. To the offending mom, I am sure she considered it as no more serious than saying “Here, use this bottle from my diaper bag” when another baby was out of formula. It turns out it’s not the same (due to virus risks, etc) but it’s hardly a sexual act.