Police Woman PROMOTED for breastfeeding!

A policewoman who breastfed nine orphaned infants during China's earthquake has been promoted. She is being hailed as a hero, as well she should be! She undoubtedly saved the lives of those babies.

Many babies caught in natural disasters do not die from whatever calamity they find themselves in. They die afterwards due to dehydration, starvation, or disease either because they lost their mothers, like these poor little ones, or because no water (or clean water) was available to mix formula or there was no way to get pre-mixed formula right away.

I briefly blogged about this recently because of the floods the mid-west is now experiencing, but this is one aspect I never thought of. Kati Kim kept her own children alive when her family was stranded in a snow storm and her husband was lost looking for help, but I hadn't thought of how many other children could avoid suffering, even if their mothers were lost, if there were other women around who could provide instant, sterile, prewarmed nourishment.

Wow! Women are amazing!

State of Emergency

Yesterday around 4:30 pm the tornado sirens went off, so we headed to the basement. Over the next two hours or so, the sirens went off about a half dozen more times as funnel clouds were spotted. We finally had to come up to grab something to eat and use the facilities . We couldn't hear much of what was going on above ground, so we were stunned at what was going on while we were underground. The pictures above are just some of what we took. Crazy. People are getting around in boats.

And once again, I was struck by how tragic it is that women don't have a clue what they would do if they were stranded and had to birth on their own. Or that so many babies starve because parents can't get to the store to get formula or can't find clean water to mix it with if they have it, when if they were breastfed, sterile, ready-made food would be instantly available.

Of course, the women don't need to know anything special, because their bodies know. Babies come out and they don't care where they are or who may (or may not) help mom. However, women would be much less afraid if they know they could (and indeed do) birth their own babies just fine under all but the most unusual of circumstances.