There is no love like that of a mother, they say. And even though mothers are known to be selfish when it comes to their kids, there are women out there who have been selflessly helping babies of other women.?
A young mother, Rushina Doctor Marfatia, from Ahmedabad, realised that she was producing more milk than her boy could feed on. It was then that she decided to donate her breast milk to five premature babies who were battling for their lives in the ICU.?
The biological mothers of the babies were either too sick or could not provide their milk to them.?
"Rushina's deed is priceless. Her milk served as a panacea for these fragile babies weighing anywhere between 600 gm and 1.5 kg who are more prone to infections," Radha Sharma of TOI quoted senior neonatologist Dr Ashish Mehta of Arpan Newborn Care Center as saying. The center started Arpan's MOM (mother's own milk) bank earlier this year.
Rushina Doctor Marfatia - Times Of India/ Money Crashers?
29-year-old Rushina became a mother to baby Viaan, recently. "When I wondered if I could donate the milk for some sick or needy baby, my father rummaged through hospitals and found this bank. Apart from exclusively breastfeeding my son, I started donating my milk and do not plan to stop anytime soon," says Rushina, who is also a former event manager and now teaches event management at a private college.?
She also believes the children are healthiest when breastfed for a long time. It is not just Rushina, there are 250 mothers who are a part of the Arpan MOM bank. It has got nearly 90 litres of mother’s milk in donations which roughly translates to 600 milk feeds of 150 ml each.?
Representational Image - Unsplash
In a similar incident, baby Shree Karan saw a post on Facebook asking for a donation of breast milk for a sick premature baby at a private hospital. Moved by the post, she donated 20 ml of milk and was delighted when the hospital called and told her that the baby was doing much better, as reported by The New Indian Express.?
The experience gave her an idea of starting milk donation camps. Six months ago, she and her friends Koushalya Jagadeesh and Ramyaa Sankaranarayanan started milk donation camps every Sunday at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Institute of Child Health (ICH) in Egmore, Tamil Nadu.?
Representational Image - Unsplash
Breast milk is important for an infant's survival and health, especially premature and sick babies. Using donor breast milk does not have all the same benefits of breastfeeding but it helps those who have difficulty in providing breast milk to their babies.
Sierra Strangfeld found out that her unborn child had trisomy 18, a rare genetic condition that causes life-threatening birth defects, but she was determined to meet him and declined when doctors suggested termination of pregnancy according to TODAY. He died just three hours after he was born.
Sierra said "Samuel only left my arms once, when he had an oxygen tube put in, otherwise he spent those three hours with us. I was able to do skin-to-skin with him and his heart rate and oxygen levels immediately raised. It was like he knew he was with his mum. We got a few squeaks out of him, and spent those three hours looking at every detail of his tiny body. Those hours felt like minutes."?
?It was at that time that Sierra decided to donate her breast milk to people who needed help. She said, “I couldn't control his life or his death, but I could control what I did afterward."
She pumped her breast milk for 63 days, from the day Samuel was born. She ended up donating 500 ounces of breast milk to the Mother’s Milk Bank in the Western Great Lakes.?
Here is to mothers who could keep humanity above everything else and helped other mothers in need.?