Baby mementos: Would you want this hanging from your neck?

Strands from baby's first haircut. The first tooth. Tiny footprints sunk into clay. Some parents even tuck away the dried stump of the umbilical cord or the stick pregnancy test as a touching memento marking the milestones of their kids.

The latest? Breast milk jewelry.

Few issues polarize mothers more than breast-feeding, and all things related to breast-feeding, so wearing processed breast milk around the neck or in a bracelet has ignited some passions.

The jewelry, on sale at the handmade marketplace Etsy, is definitely not for writer Ashley McCann, 34, in Naples, Fla. She nursed both her boys, 6 and 9, and loved it, but she feels some sort of gross-out line has been crossed.

"This is the most hilariously absurd trend in mommy jewelry that I have ever heard about in my life," she said. "I think it is just flat-out weird, to be honest."

In addition to finished jewelry, a search on Etsy produces sellers of breast milk soap and one offering a locket kit for the DIY inclined. A couple purveyors, both moms, said in interviews that they hit on the idea as they sought out unusual keepsakes of their special bonds with their babies during nursing.

The two wouldn't reveal their recipes for processing the milk, which is covered with a glaze or clear resin after it is plasticized or dehydrated, forming a clay-like substance that hardens over time when at least one method is used.

Prices range from $15 for the kit, which includes various locket designs, to $125 for a double pendant in copper bezels with a matching vintage chain.

"What a wonderful way to preserve the 'liquid gold' that we are only able to make for a certain period of time," reads the product description for the latter. "This can be passed down for generations and what a fantastic gift to give to your child, the root of their survival."

The passing-down notion prompted more than a few jokes on BabyCenter.com when the subject first came up innocently enough in January. A poster on the site, which has an average 11 million unique views a month, said she had heard of breast milk jewelry and wondered where she could find some, said Rebecca Michals, who manages the message boards.

"It may not be for everyone," Michals offers. "I think it's a matter of opinion."

Oh yes. Just as attachment parenting (wearing your child, the family bed) is a matter of opinion, or nursing in public, or those breast-feeding baby dolls of the holiday season last year.

"I actually think it's the attitude behind it," McCann said as she tried to explain her disdain. Nursing, she said, "is one of my fondest memories, and honestly I would get pregnant again to nurse another baby. But it was the relationship. There's something about plasticizing breast milk, which is just food to nurse your baby, that almost seems like some sort of weird worship of nursing."

Tell that to the 20 or so people who contact Allicia Mogavero each day about the breast milk jewelry she began selling in 2007, then mostly to friends. She put her designs on Etsy about a year ago and has sold about 200 pieces, including pendants, bracelets, lockets and beads of breast milk alone for people to do with what they wish. She personalizes the jewelry with names in fancy script.

In all, she offers 36 items, using a five-step process to preserve a small amount of milk shipped to her as instructed. Working themilk takes about four weeks and the resin needs a week or two to dry, she said.

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