After I wrote the Breast Friends essay last year for Babble, my friend Anastasia and I both received many press calls. Most intrepid reporters wanted to know if we were, measurably, more “bonded” because of it. I couldn’t come up with a way to assess this, so I asked Anastasia:

Anastasia: “We’re close, but we’re not dreaming each other’s dreams or anything.”

True, we haven’t telekinetically merged, but we see each other as much as possible and bathe the kiddies together at least once a week. Anastasia still breastfeeds her near-3-year-old—not mine—but she has left her milk in a bottle in my fridge and Skuli loves it.

The first time she made him a bottle, I wondered if he’d even drink it given that he is used to 2% Horizon Organic—but then I thought, he guzzles the raw milk that my super-healthy neighbor Hannah gives him. Which made me think about how breast milk is, indeed, merely organic food. And how some people think it has magical properties (just like many people attribute all sorts of healing to raw cow’s milk), and others think anything other than pasteurized animal milk is dirty and perverted. (Speaking of which, check out this weird human dairy farm “ad”).

Seeking more confirmation, I called several doulas in New York City, and all of them had nursed someone else’s baby, too, and said “it’s food,” when I asked why they did it. Which is leading me to think cross-nursing is more common than I thought when Anastasia and I did it. But why would people not want to talk about it openly? Hmmm.