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‘Sister Wives’ Meri Brown Wet Nurse For Janelle’s Daughter Maddie

By Alycia Ancell
Published on: 16:41 PST, Jun 6, 2016

TLC‘s Sister Wives shared a surprising bit of information on this week’s episode. It is well known that first wife Meri Brown only has one child, Mariah, with her husband, Kody Brown. Meri has struggled to get pregnant again since Mariah was born and suffered a miscarriage when Mariah was 12.

What many do not know is the first three sister wives, Meri, Janelle, and Christine, were all having kids at the same time. Although Meri was the first wife, she was not the first sister wife to get pregnant. Janelle had the first child in the polygamist Brown family, Logan. Oftentimes when one wife was pregnant, another wife was also pregnant or had just given birth. Having kids so close together allowed Meri and Janelle to share something they normally would not have.

In an interview during Sunday night’s episode of Sister Wives, Meri and Janelle shared that they did something a bit out of the ordinary when the oldest kids were babies. Janelle shared that the first six months of Maddie’s life was very difficult. Maddie did not put on any weight in the first six months. The lack of weight gain scared Janelle and the other wives. Janelle said she was not producing enough milk on her own, and she felt that she was starving Maddie. Instead of turning to the traditional breastmilk substitution of formula, Janelle instead turned to her sister wife, Meri. You heard right, Meri was a wet nurse for Janelle. Meri, who was still breastfeeding Mariah, was producing enough milk to feed both Mariah and Maddie when Maddie needed the additional supplement.

So how did Meri feel about breastfeeding Maddie? According to the Sister Wives interview, Meri said she felt awkward breastfeeding Maddie, but she did what was needed to keep Maddie healthy. Meri mentioned several times during the interview that the whole situation was awkward. It’s not clear why the sister wives didn’t choose to turn to formula if it made Meri so uncomfortable.

It looks like the sister wives dodged a bomb as far as social media goes with this episode. Normally, one of the four wives live tweets as the episode is airing. This week, though, the Brown group was in Montana participating in Maddie’s wedding. Janelle shared on Twitter that she wouldn’t be tweeting during the episode. Sister Wives often receives a lot of hate on social media, so it probably worked out for the best they weren’t able to respond to comments regarding Meri breastfeeding Maddie.

During the interview about the older kids being born, Meri also broke down because of her issue with only being able to have one child. Robyn, the first to notice that Meri was upset, seemed almost irritated with Meri for turning such a happy conversation into a depressing one. Robyn flat out called Meri out in the middle of the interview. It seemed like Meri was making Robyn feel bad for sitting there, pregnant as a whale, and Robyn just wasn’t going to let that happen. While they appear to be best friends in this twitter photo, Robyn seems to have lost her friendship with Meri during her pregnancy.

What do you think about Meri breastfeeding Maddie when she was a baby? Do you think it seems perfectly normal, or do you think Janelle should have just gone with formula? Did Meri ruin how special what she did was by making the gift seem awkward? Leave your feedback in the comments below, and tune in for a new episode of Sister Wives on Sunday at 8/7c on TLC.

[Photo by @MeriBrown1/Twitter]

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