Feeding a Hospital-Born Infant with Pooled Milk

Question

In hospitals in Britain the practice is this: children are born in the maternity ward, after which the woman and the child are kept for five or ten days and then discharged. But a child born before the full nine months, that is, at seven months, is kept back in view of its weakness and placed in a glass machine so that it attains proper weight and health. During this time it is fed its mother’s milk as far as possible: the mother expresses her milk into a bottle and the nurse feeds it to the child.

Answer

(1) Out of necessity (darura) it is permissible. (2) At a time of need it is allowed. (3) The prohibition by suckling will attach to every woman whose milk the child drank within the period of suckling; this is the most correct, the most evident and the most cautious view (asahh, azhar, ahwat), as in “Majma‘ al-Anhur”, vol. 1, p. 379.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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