Flight Attendant Breastfeeds Stranger’s Baby After Mom Ran Out of Milk During Flight

I don’t know about you, but when I see a baby on a flight my first thought is “please do not seat me next to that baby.” Yes, it’s a terrible reaction. It’s selfish and unkind. But babies do cry, and when you’re on a flight, well it’s kind of unpleasant for everyone involved. It is amazing, however, when  a person — typically a stranger — goes out of their way to be of assistance to the parent onboard, or in the shopping aisle, or whatever place a baby is crying.

On a recent domestic flight on Philippine Airlines, a mom was onboard with her baby. Unfortunately she had run out of formula and had no way of feeding the baby, so naturally the baby could not stop crying. That is when 24-year-old flight attendant Patrisha Organo stepped in and offered to help. Organo didn’t have extra formula or milk to offer the mom, but she did have something even better, her own breastmilk.

“I approached the mother and asked if everything’s okay, I tried to tell her to feed her hungry child,” Organo wrote on Facebook. “Teary-eyed, she told me that she ran out of formula milk. Passengers started looking and staring at the tiny, fragile crying infant. I felt a pinch in my heart. There’s no formula milk onboard. I thought to myself, there’s only one thing I could offer and that’s my own milk. And so I offered. Ms. Sheryl Villaflor, Line Administrator on my flight, immediately assisted the mother to the galley where I breastfed the baby. The baby started rooting, she was so hungry.”

Organo added that she was so happy that she was a person that could really help this woman and her baby: “I saw the relief on her mother’s eyes. I continued to feed the baby until she fell asleep . I escorted her back to her seat and just before I left, the mother sincerely thanked me. I was right, the flight’s gonna be special, so special not only because I got qualified as an Evaluator but I got to help. I breastfed a stranger’s baby inflight. Thank you, Lord for the gift of mother’s milk.”

Pretty incredible right? While that is a heartwarming story, it’s important to note that feeding breastmilk from a stranger to your own baby isn’t risk free. The FDA says a doctor should approve when a baby is given breastmilk from another person because the milk carries a lot of DNA.

What do you think? If you were a mom with a crying baby that had run out of food, would you let a stranger breastfeed your baby? Let us know in the comment section below.