A flight attendant from the Philippines who breastfed a passenger’s hungry baby is touching hearts on social media.
Patrisha Organo, who has been a flight attendant for Philippine Airlines for four years, shared on Facebook that she gave her milk to a hungry infant during a domestic flight after the baby’s mother ran out of baby formula.
According to her post, which came a day after the incident on November 7, Organo heard a baby crying “a cry that will make you want to do anything to help.”
“I approached the mother and asked if everything’s OK, I tried to tell her to feed her hungry child. Teary-eyed, she told me that she ran out of formula milk,” wrote the 24-year-old, who is also the mother of a 9-month-old baby.
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“Passengers started looking and staring at the tiny, fragile crying infant. I felt a pinch in my heart. There’s no formula milk on board. I thought to myself, there’s only one thing I could offer and that’s my own milk. And so I offered,” she added.
After seeking permission from the flight’s line administrator, she made the suggestion to the mother, who immediately agreed. They then headed to a private area where Organo could feed the baby.
In her post, Organo included a photo of her holding the passenger’s baby. She noted that she edited the picture to protect “her family’s privacy.”
Her post has earned thousands of reactions and has been shared over 30,000 times. Many netizens also commended Organo for her willingness to go above and beyond her call of duty.
Some, however, expressed concerns and cited the health risks involved in giving a baby breast milk from another mother.
While sharing milk has become an acceptable practice in some cultures, the majority of the medical community has been warning against it.
“We support breastfeeding, but if you can’t nurse, we recommend breast milk from a milk bank, or that you use formula,” Ari Brown M.D. said, according to Parenting.com. She is a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and author of Baby 411. “Even if you have a good friend who wants to donate milk, you can’t guarantee that it’s free of infections, like HIV. Breast milk is a bodily fluid, just like blood. Would you be willing to give your baby a blood transfusion without first having it tested?”
Similarly, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns against the practice and recommends consulting the child’s health care provider beforehand.
“Risks for the baby include exposure to infectious diseases, including HIV, to chemical contaminants, such as some illegal drugs, and to a limited number of prescription drugs that might be in the human milk, if the donor has not been adequately screened,” the FDA noted in its website.
Featured Image via Facebook / Patricia Organo
