Before their plural family combusted, Meri Brown was once like another mom to some of Kody Brown‘s other children.
During the Sunday, October 13, episode of Sister Wives, Kody’s visit with daughter Mykelti and her newborn twins sparked a discussion about one long-held rumor about polygamy.
“So, there’s this rumor that in the church, a lot of the sister wives would sit around and breast-feed and swap kids around,” a director off camera asked Christine Brown during a confessional.
Christine, 52, insisted there was no truth to the story. “No, it was a joke,” she added. “That’s disgusting.”
Meri, 53, offered a different take. “I actually breast-fed one of our kids that was not my own child,” she said in an interview of her own. “And that was something that was kind of medically necessary at the time. But it wasn’t something that we did on a regular basis just for fun, just for kicks and giggles.”
Meri was Kody’s first wife. The couple tied the knot in 1990 and welcomed one child, Leon, before Kody, 55, entered a spiritual union with Janelle Brown in 1993. The pair shared six children. (Their son Garrison died by suicide at age 25 earlier this year.)
“I’ve never breast-fed another baby,” Janelle, 55, said during Sunday’s episode. “I never had enough milk. I would’ve been hard pressed to do that.”
Kody shares another six children with Christine, whom he spiritually wed in 1994. Fourth wife Robyn Brown entered the family in 2010 and was already a mother of three children from a previous relationship. She and Kody welcomed two more kids together. (Kody and Robyn, 48, legally wed in 2014 in order for him to adopt her older children. She is now his only wife.)
In a separate confessional, Robyn reluctantly admitted that the breast-feeding rumor is true. “Women would breast-feed each other’s babies in our culture. I’ve seen it plenty of times, absolutely,” she told the cameras.
She explained that the habit wasn’t like playing a game of “musical babies,” adding, “It’s more [out] of necessity and help and, you know, [the] community of women being supportive to each other about their children.”
Season 19 of Sister Wives premiered last month and follows the fallout from Kody’s three separations. Christine was the first to leave the plural family in 2021 and has since moved on with husband David Woolley, whom she wed last year. Janelle confirmed her split from Kody in 2022, shortly before Meri revealed the end of her own spiritual union in 2023.
“Christine, Janelle and Meri all chose to have me leave the home,” Kody claimed in the September 22 episode of the TLC series, noting that he “wasn’t ever going to leave them, no matter how much I didn’t love them.”
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
