Motherless Baby Breastfed By Six Women Each Day
Posted by JeanneSager
A baby without a mom. A bunch of moms still breastfeeding their own babies. It was just meant to be.
You don't hear about death during childbirth much anymore, (and thank goodness for that), but when Susan Goodrich lost her life shortly after giving birth to her son, one of her most important wishes for her child was fulfilled by a band of impromptu wet nurses, moms who heard a baby needed their help.
Charles Moses Martin Goodrich was born on Jan. 11, but when his dad said he wanted the boy to receive breastmilk right off the bat, he was told the hospital didn't have a milkbank. A delivery could come in from elsewhere in Michigan, but it would take several days to ship.
Then Robbie Goodrich got a call of condolence from a friend, a mom who was still nursing her one-year-old daughter. Anything the family needed, she said, anything. . . even her breastmilk. It's when Robbie told his hometown paper that things clicked - he realized other moms might want to help him in his plight, and he called on a family friend to help him round up moms with something to give.
The found twenty total women who set up a schedule - six times a day, Charles has been fed by a different woman (that's one of the volunteers pictured). And by fed, I mean actually suckling at the breast.That is the most incredible part of the story to me - that these women don't just pump their milk and ship it over. With children at home (obviously), they drop everything to drive to the Goodrich home and allow a stranger's baby to nurse. It's the kind of love only a parent could muster for a child - but these aren't his parents!
At night, his father feeds him with bottles of milk pumped by the volunteers, and Charles is a happy, healthy baby despite his rough start to life.
The subject became controversial recently with Salma Hayek's highly publicized feeding of another woman's child, which some called a publicity stunt. There's no way these nameless women could be accused of the same thing. More to the point, what they're doing is life-sustaining while Hayek's one-off feeding was not going to drastically change a child's life.
What do you think of this? Would you do it? Or would you just pump your milk and send it over?
Image/Source: The Mining Journal
http://babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2009/03/25/motherless-baby-breastfed-by-six-women-each-day.aspx
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