Wednesday, November 16, 2011

How Many Words Can You Think Of For...

Read this crazy fun book with my Baby Sis this summer called The Wet Nurse's Tale by Erica Eisdorfer .

 It is a great story about a young woman name Susan Rose, who has a very practical outlook on life.   It is set in Victorian England, just as the profession of wet nursing is changing. What is a wet nurse?  A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds your baby for you either because you can't, or your to busy, or your too rich.  Before, women would bring there children to live at the home of the wet nurse until the baby was weaned and sent back to live with their family.  Our plucky heroine gets herself  *ahem* with child and as she is a single mother (super scandalous in this era) her father makes her work to earn their keep.  To accomplish this she uses her new ample milk supply to feed other babies.  The down side to this is they no longer bring the kids to her, she must leave her own child at home and live with the family of the nursee.  Susan is heartbroken to leave her newborn son at home while she is off nursing another woman's child.  Susan's mother (who was a wet nurse herself until her supply dried up in her 50's) promises to rag feed the child, which is dipping a rag in warm milk to try and keep the baby fed until she returns home.  Unfortunately the baby does not take to rag feeding and dies before Susan can see him again.  Susan is understandably distraught, especially as she is forced to be around newborns, for if she does not keep continuously employed her supply will dry up and she will no longer be able to work as a wet nurse.  As life goes on, our pragmatic Susan gets herself *ahem* knocked up again.  This time she refuses to leave the child, attempting to find a position that will allow her to bring her own baby with her.  Alas the decision is eventually made for her, when her alcoholic father secretly sells her son to an upper class lady who is unable to have her own children.  The ever resourceful Susan finds a way to get employed as her sons own wet nurse (think Moses and his mother).

 As the story progresses we find that the adoptive mother is...well...loony!  Susan finds way's to encourage this and eventually regains custody of her son, finds true love and lives happily ever after. Fun, quick read that ended happy, a perfect beach book or curl up with a cup of tea book (books set in England always make me want to have a cup of tea)
Favorite part of the book was the number of words I learned for breast (boob, teat, tit, dug, milk bag, etc..)
What do you think, is it interesting learning about such an odd, unspoken profession, or do you think there is a reason we don't go around offering it as a career at job fairs?

No comments:

Post a Comment