Might be a dumb ?
Could Christa be able to breast feed a baby still? I know we need more info but lets say she gave birth and only lost the baby 2 months before the camp fire scene. Could she (if Clem finds her) feed the new baby? I know it sounds dumb...just thinking out loud
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
Don't think she still able to feed the baby, and it's sad, because they had nowhere they could get the baby formula from, and no one else is capable to feed him either.
Women can only breast feed if they are pregnant, some can without but it is rare.
At the start of season two, she looked about 6-8 months pregnant. Fast forward 16 months? No. She won't be able to anymore.
Her milk would have dried up a lonnnnnng time ago. Doesn't take very long at all when you aren't nursing.
Maybe another pregnant lady will join the group and breast feed the baby?
That's a very interesting question
Well they can breastfeed for some time after they're pregnant, you know. Otherwise, what the hell would be the point?
Or they could take Rebeccas zombified body and you know breastfeed the child? No? okay
Hey man, Lysa Arryn kept her mountains misty for like 10 years.
(Game of Thrones reference for those who don't know)
Its possible to induce lactation even when a women hasn't been pregnant however since the baby is born already its a bit late for that.
Some females can lactate at the mere presence of a crying baby. Christa likely isn't like this, though. Given Christa's baby likely died a year before Clem meets the cabin group, she'd have to be dried out. And stress also acts as an inhibitor with a mother's ability to make milk along with her weight. If she doesn't weigh enough, she can't make milk so it's possible her baby died due to starvation because she couldn't make any.
Before the invention of formula, if a baby wasn't breastfed by their mother or a wet-nurse, alternates were used. Some babies were fed simple water or cow or goat milk. Some were fed beer (water wasn't exactly clean back then) or wine. And people often wonder why infants died. Since formula would obviously be expiring in the zombie apocalypse, alternates have to be taken which could result in going back to water and mashing up some food to mix in unless a wet-nurse could be found. So infancy survival rates will just take a U-turn back to pre-modern times and drop even lower due to the zombie threat. In the 1700s, a family often had a lot of children and 6 were the average to survive to adulthood. In the zombie apocalypse, they might be lucky to have 1-2 kids and 0-1 will survive to adulthood.
As an interesting tidbit, babies were often breastfed up to the age of 2 until the modern day. Ancient Egyptian women breastfed up to age 3. Read a label on a baby formula can and you often see recommendation to continue feeding the baby the formula until age 2 yet women often balk at the idea of breastfeeding past 6 months these days.
In regards to wet-nurses, if a woman is continuously breastfeeding (going from one kid to the next to the next), she can effectively continue to lactate even beyond menopause. There was a wet-nurse I saw an article on a few years ago who was well into her 60s and still nursing babies.
Also related to that, but breastfeeding acts as a natural contraceptive. A mother's who's breastfeeding has a much lower chance of becoming pregnant again (comparative to the birth control pill) than a woman who just kicked her newborn off to the bottle immediately after birth. It's not foolproof and certainly varies from woman to woman, but what method is besides not having sex to begin with?
If you wait before choosing between heading in the town immediatey or rest for few days, you can hear Bonnie saying that they have baby formula. It makes no sense, but yeah, they have it.
Clearly, the baby formula was in the infinite pocket of Clem's plot armour, that she inherited from lee. Too bad she needs to take it off for cleaning during episode five.
Reminds me of the time Christa shrunk it in the wash near the end of episode four, season one while lee was taking a nap...
What doesn't make sense is by now most of that, if not all, should be expired by now.
Christa looked extremely gaunt and ill when we last saw her, so I don't think her body's in good enough condition to feed the baby right away.
However, women need sufficient stimulation to lactate, regardless of whether they had a baby or not. In Christa's case, I can see her bonding with the baby that way - but she'd need to use the baby formula in order to feed the kid.