There is nothing better for a newborn than to receive milk from his mother's breast, but even though the birth of little Alexander was marked by fatality, the determination of the parents to breastfeed was stronger than life itself .
The baby was born prematurely. At 33 weeks gestation, he came to the world with just 1,430 grams for a lupus suffered by his mother, Catalina, who died the following day due to the complications of childbirth. After his mother dies, the child feeds on breast milk donated by a group of women from Costa Rica.
Love and solidarity move mountains
His mother had always wanted to feed her baby with breast milk, so when he died, both the father and the child's grandmother moved heaven and earth to get it. The first 20 days was easy, because the boy stayed that time in the hospital, where he received milk from the San Ramón Blood Bank, but the problem would be when he left the hospital.
The story of Catalina and her family moved everyone and got a group of women in solidarity to donate their own milk and create an organization that today bears his name: Catalina Vega Human Milk Bank Foundation. Between the father, the grandmother and they organized to collect or carry the milk that little Alejandro needed to feed.
The baby is now almost five months old and is growing strong and healthy with the best possible food thanks to the solidarity of other mothers. Remember that if breast milk is the best for the newborn, when it comes to a premature baby its benefits are even greater.
It would have been easy to bottle feed
It would have been easy to bottle feed, much easier than assembling the logistics to get the breast milk needed for each shot, but the effort was worth it. Not only because of the baby, but because of the memory of his mother that he could not feed his baby from his own chest.
Catalina's death will not be forgotten. The Foundation now seeks to increase the number of female donors and aims to promote the creation of more breast milk banks in Costa Rica so that many more children benefit from it when the mother, for whatever reason, cannot do so.
What would you have liked?
These stories are not to make you sad, but to leave a teaching. When I know these stories, I immediately try to put myself in the shoes of their protagonists and I wonder "what would I have done instead."
I don't think my husband had such a clear idea of ​​breastfeeding. For me it was the only possibility, but I imagine that in such a sad situation he would not have had the strength to do anything other than give formula milk. But if I had not been able to do it, I would have liked my daughters to receive milk from other mothers.
