Moms Would Follow Salma Hayek & Breastfeed Another’s Starving Baby
By now I am sure you all have seen the headlines about Salma Hayek breastfeeding a starving baby on her UNICEF mission to Sierra Leone.
I first read a mention of it in an article in USA Today detailing Salma’s trip as ambassador for the UNICEF/ Pampers’ One Pack = One Vaccine Campaign:
“The baby was perfectly healthy, but the mother didn’t have milk. He was very hungry. I was weaning Valentina, but I still had a lot of milk that I was pumping, so I breast-fed the baby,” she says, her voice dropping. “You should have seen his eyes. When he felt the nourishment, he immediately stopped crying.”
This was just one brief mention in a feature article that was 19 paragraphs long. I had to re-read it to make sure that I read correctly. NOT because I doubted that Salma would breastfeed a needy child, but, rather I was surprised that USA Today was not making the cross-nursing a focus of the feature article itself.
Kudos to USA Today, for just mentioning this casually and dropping this information as naturally as it should be. Really, just like most nursing moms would stop to nurse a child in need.
Ultimately, what Salma did should not be seen as a big deal. But, it is a big deal because Salma is, well, Salma. She’s a celebrity who’s every move is followed by the watchful paparazzi and millions more around the globe.
Personally, I had the opportunity to ask Salma about her breastfeeding this starving infant more than a week ago when I interviewed her at UNICEF. I chose not, because I just didn’t want to “make it into a thing” when really it SHOULD NOT be “a thing!”
However, I mention it NOW, because my brilliant friends at Celebrity Baby Blog are conducting a poll (still ongoing) and the results are honestly mind-blowingly surprising (in the best possible of ways)!
The question is “Would you or have you ever nursed another woman’s child who was in need?” Over 6,100 women have responded and 78% responded with “Yes, they would” and 4% with “Yes, they have.”
The results of this poll are a BIG DEAL. This is amazing.
If you have no idea what I have been writing about. Here is the footage of Salma on her UNICEF trip to Sierra Leone.
