When Amy Anderson, a U.S. resident was pregnant with her third child, she found out that her unborn son, Bryson, had died in utero due to a lower urinary tract obstruction. After she gave birth to stillborn at 20 weeks, she begin lactating and decided to ignore her doctor’s suggestion to bind her breasts and take Sudafed. Instead, she pumped breast milk to donate to parents in need.
While she was still grieving, act of pumping milk was comforting, and it helped her with the grieving process. Her want to do everything she could to help other families avoid the heartbreak of baby loss, turned her feeling of grief into gratitude!
After some research she learned about necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), an painful bowel disease that causes parts of the intestines to die, and the second-leading cause of death for premature babies.
The NEC Society said the use of a human milk diet can lower the risk of NEC by 79 percent.
We know that ‘preterm breast milk’ is very nutrient-rich, so she decided to pump milk for eight months which resulted in 92 gallons of breast milk, equal to 30,000 feedings. It was donated to five milk banks in four US states and Canada.
However, Ms Anderson’s act of generosity was not welcomed by everyone, with her now-former employers telling her she had no right to pump milk because “your baby is dead”.
It was enough to make her decide to resign from her job and fight for the rights of all lactating women.
She said she has since heard back from a state legislator who has offered to help.
Ms Anderson now documents her journey through the Facebook page Donating Through Grief: Bryson’s Legacy in an effort to educate others about difficulties faced by families who have lost a baby.
