Feed the Mother Who Feeds the Baby

In celebration of my 1,000th post here at Breastfeeding 1-2-3, I want to share a very happy story I came across. You might remember this post I wrote for Blog Action Day last year on Breastfeeding and Poverty (read it if you haven’t already — it’s one of my better posts if I do say so myself ). In that post I shared what I learned about how a malnourished mother should continue breastfeeding and not wean and give her baby f*ormula. I remembered that information as I started to read a post by Mary at Owlhaven.net on her sister Sophie’s medical mission in Ethiopia (you can read my review of Mary’s book A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family and check out her newly released book Family Feasts for $75 a Week: A Penny-wise Mom Shares Her Recipe for Cutting Hundreds from Your Monthly Food Bill).

Mary collected monetary donations to send with Sophie to Ethiopia, and the doctor with whom Sophie works suggested that Sophie fund and run the feeding program. You can imagine my worry when I read “feeding program.” I really hoped that did not mean that the money was going to be used to buy f*ormula! I was pleasantly surprised to read this in Sophie’s letter:

Adults can get on the feeding program if they are desperately poor, and that poverty is validated by their malnourished appearance, and by the confirmation of others in the community. Infants are also a part of this program. Currently, we have 3 sets of twin babies that are “fed.” The high-protein granola is given to the infant’s breastfeeding mother so that she can produce enough milk to feed them. In order to get a refill (every other week), the babies are weighed to ensure that they are getting the benefit of the food.

Sophie goes on to tell of one success story:

Two of the twins currently on the program are now 4 months old, and the fattest little Ethiopian babies I have ever seen! It’s always so fun to weigh them because their mom is so proud, and the babies are so smiley and adorable. [Dr.] Mary says that when they started 3 months ago, mom was completely emaciated, and the babies were not looking any better. She gave the mom the granola, and the next week, she looked less emaciated, and the babies were vigorous and bright-eyed–they were a whole different family because of their little tin of granola!

What a wonderful story and a powerful “advertisement” for the benefits of breastfeeding! Thank you Mary and Sophie for sharing that inspirational account of the (breast)feeding program!