Wet nurse

A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for someone elses child. In ancient times this was very common, partly because many women died in childbirth. Many babies died so women were available to do this. Wealthy people would pay women to do this.

Since infant formula was invented this has become much less common.

Wet Nurse Media

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  Louis XIV as an infant with his nurse Longuet de la Giraudière

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  A 16th-century carving in a Belgian church, showing a woman expressing her milk into a bowl.

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  A Russian wet nurse, c. 1913

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  A funerary stele (akin to a gravestone) erected by Roman citizen Lucius Nutrius Gallus in the 2nd half of the 1st century AD for himself, his wet nurse, and other members of his family and household

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  Catherine Willoughby, formerly Duchess of Suffolk, and her later husband Richard Bertie, are forced into exile, taking their baby and wet nurse

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  The bureau of wet nurses in Paris