Family Forum / Parenting / Mothers / May 2008

Under the rubbles, dead mothers tightly held their babies; baby girl
stayed alive by breastfeeding from dead mother
Singtao News (written in Chinese)
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/080517/60/2u63i.html

Translation courtesy of an online friend who read it in the original.

In Duijangyan, Sichuan, a young mother tightly held her baby girl, who
was about 3 to 4 months old, while using her own shoulders to stop the
roof from falling onto her baby. The mother slowly lost her life,
however the baby in her arms was still breastfeeding from her dead
mother, until the baby was rescued. In Beichuan, another mother who
also died using her body to protect her baby, left the last message to
her baby: "my dearest baby, if you can live through this, you have to
remember that I love you."

In the afternoon of May 13th, the second day after the Sichuan
earthquake, scores of rescue workers were digging through a
residential area of Duijanyan, looking for survivors. A volunteer
doctor said that under the rubbles, they found a young mother holding
a 3-4 months old baby. The mother was curling her body, her head
lowered, and she had no sign of life, however her shirt was lifted up,
and the baby girl in her arms was still sucking on mother's nipples.

Doctor wept as he recounted the scene, "At that moment, we saw a red
(lively) little face, against the dead mother's gray breasts that were
covered with dusts…it was such a contrast. Everyone at the scene
cried.

"I can't imagine, a dead mother was still breastfeeding her own child.
From the way she was holding the baby, you can tell that she was
protecting her child, or perhaps the mother put her nipple into the
baby's mouth just before the mother died. We carefully took the baby
out. The moment the baby was taken away from her mother's nipple, the
baby cried."

In Beichuan, rescue workers also found another dead mother protecting
her child: she was kneeling down, bowing her back; both arms on the
ground supporting her body - her posture was like someone kowtowing,
however her body was crushed so badly that it was deformed, and she
was dead.

Since it looked like she was protecting something underneath her,
rescue workers carefully removed the rocks and stones around her. They
found a baby who was around 3, 4 months old underneath her body. It
was because the mother used her own body to block the falling wall,
the baby was miraculously completely unharmed. When being taken out,
the baby was even sleeping peacefully.

A nurse removed the blanket from the baby to examine her, and found a
cell phone tucked inside the blanket. Doctor looked at the screen of
the cell phone, and saw a text message left by the baby's mother, "my
dearest baby, if you can live through this, you have to remember that
I love you."