Book of Breast-feeding
Book of Breast-feeding
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Book of Breast-feeding

It is discouraged to employ as a wet-nurse a woman who is openly immoral, a non-Muslim, ill-tempered, a leper, or one afflicted with vitiligo.

If a woman suckles an infant with milk produced by a pregnancy that is legally traced back to the man who had intercourse with her,1 that infant becomes the child of both of them; the infant’s descendants, no matter how far down the line, are likewise their descendants, and every child born to either of them—whether to one another or to someone else—becomes that infant’s milk-brother or milk-sister. Apply the same ruling to comparable situations.

The prohibition created by breast-feeding with respect to marriage, and the establishment of the corresponding unmarriageable kinship, is identical to that of blood relations—provided the child nurses five separate times within the first two lunar years.2 If any part of the fifth suckling occurs even an instant after the two years have elapsed, the prohibition is not established.

Whenever the child latches onto the breast and then releases it—even if forcibly—and then latches on again, that is counted as a second suckling.3

Instillation of the milk into the nose (saʿūṭ), pouring it into the mouth (wujūr), or consuming milk that has been curdled or mixed with water while its characteristics remain intact—all have the same legal effect as direct breast-feeding in creating marital prohibition.4