Mum Donates Breastmilk To Feed Friend’s Adopted Baby After Losing Her Own Daughter
When Sarah lost her daughter, she offered her friend Lauren her breastmilk to feed her adopted daughter, Arsema [Photo: Instagram/sarah_rieke]
Sarah Rieke and Lauren Casper were looking forward to entering the next stages of motherhood together. Lauren and her husband were finalising the adoption of their newborn daughter, Arsema, while Sarah was pregnant and approaching her 20 week scan.
Lauren was secretly hoping Sarah would find out she was carrying a girl so their daughters could grow up together. But while Sarah’s ultrasound did indeed reveal she was expecting a girl, there were complications, which would prevent her daughter, Evie, living for very long outside the womb.
“I prepared my nursery for the homecoming of my daughter and Sarah planned a funeral,” wrote Lauren in a heartfelt blog post.
Lauren’s friend gave her and adopted daughter, Arsema an incredible gift [Photo: Instagram/lcasper1]
But though Lauren’s joy, coincided with her friend’s deep grief, Sarah’s strength was such that she was able to offer Lauren and her adopted daughter, Arsema an incredible gift – her breastmilk.
“'I was wondering if you would like to have my breastmilk after Evie is born. I thought maybe you could use it to feed Arsema’,” Lauren recalls Sarah saying. “I remember feeling the weight of deep sadness and enormous gratitude all at once.”
A month later, Sarah gave birth to her baby girl, Evie, who lived for a few precious hours. A week later, Sarah brought a cooler filled with plastic bags of her breastmilk for Arsema, something she would continue to do for many more weeks.
"Each time I filled Arsema’s bottle and sat in the rocker to feed her I would think about Sarah and Evie. I would pray for Sarah’s broken heart and thank God for the gift Sarah had so selflessly given me and my daughter,” wrote Lauren in her blog.
Sarah and her children [Photo: Instagram/sarah_rieke]
At a time of extreme grief, it’s a pretty amazing and selfless thing for Sarah to have done, but if you ask her she’ll say she didn’t do anything special.
“Pumping milk for Arsema after Evie passed away was a blessing for me,” she wrote in her own blog post. “It was good for me to sit and be still and take the time to think and reflect on Evie’s life and pray for Arsema’s future. It was also good for my postpartum body – breastfeeding aids in returning your uterus back to normal size. And honestly, I was just happy for the opportunity to pump because I felt like allowing my milk to just dry up would cause my heart more pain.”
Sarah says the decision to offer her breastmilk to her friend’s daughter actually felt “normal”.
“Logical, really. A blessing, certainly, on both sides. But maybe not as saintly as others seem to think,” she adds.
It’s now been three years since Sarah gave Lauren her breast milk and since then the friends have been through further ups and downs together. Arsema has needed several surgeries and Sarah lost another baby, Charlie, last year, this time however Sarah chose not to share her breastmilk.
“Pumping for Arsema was exactly the right thing for me to do after losing Evie. The opportunity was there and I was grateful for it. It felt right for my grieving heart,” she wrote in her blog.
“But after losing my son, Charlie, in September 2015, I chose to do the opposite. The shock and pain of losing another sweet baby after birth was just too deep – I couldn’t bring myself to pump,” she explained.
Lauren and her family [Photo: Instagram/lcasper1]
And Sarah has a message for other mums who suffer the pain of infant loss and are wondering how to handle her postpartum milk supply.
“Do what feels right for you. Whether you pump and find healing there, or actively work to prevent your body from producing milk at all, both are right. The depth of pain after losing an infant is something I have still never been able to find adequate words for. Do what feels best for you, and that is exactly the right choice.”
If ever a story illustrates the power of love and friendship in the midst of crippling grief, it has to be this one.
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