Most people responded positively to the Baby Moses story. His mother died of a rare condition shortly after birth. And not only did he and his family find support from the community in their grieving, they also found a network of women to breastfeed him throughout the day, every day.

Now Moses is 6 months old. And you know what? He’s still getting breastmilk.

Many of the same women are still breastfeeding the little guy. But over time, some have stopped as their own children weened. Others joined this cross-nursing crew.

Together, they told their updated story to Freep.com.

Robbie Goodrich said that there has been some raised eyebrows from the arrangement, but he hasn’t received any criticism personally. It’s not a sexual thing, no matter what people want to associate with breast, he said.

There’s always an initial outpouring of sympathy in any crisis. People want to help. But the question is, can you make it sustain to where now helping just becomes part of your life. And the answer was, yeah, people do want to keep helping.

These “helpers” were initially about 20 women who stepped up to the plate. Altogether, 25 different women have breastfed Moses during his first 6 months. Most say they never even considered wet nursing before, but they wanted to give a baby something he was missing. One, Kyra Fillmore, said,

If they need milk for the baby, I’d be happy to pump. And I said, if they’re open, I’d nurse the baby.

Another was once a student in Susan Goodrich’s classes, and helped out of sadness for the family. Said Kara Niemi,

I knew I wanted to help somehow, but I didn’t know how. That kind of gave me a purpose. I’d seen her at the doctor’s office and she was so happy to have a baby. It was really shocking.

The women all breastfeed personally, and some pump for overnights. In the beginning, it was as much about the skin-to-skin contact as anything else.

In the end, Goodrich sounds kind of like a lactivist when he talks about his son’s needs:

This isn’t like a dairy bar. It’s not mechanical, ‘.let’s get the baby food.’ It’s deeper than that…

Parenting isn’t about convenience. Parenting is about what’s best for the kids. And this is what I’m convinced is best for my children.

Image: Daquella manera on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

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