Sierra Strangfeld never expected her heartfelt post about donating breastmilk to go viral.
“I am a hairstylist, so when our journey began, it was the easiest way for me to spread the word of what was happening in my pregnancy, versus being asked all the time or pretending I was okay when I really wasn’t,” she tells SheKnows about why she started sharing her journey. Over the summer, she found out at a 20-week check-up that her son, Samuel, was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a rare genetic condition that is usually fatal within the first week of life if not before. She saw her post on donating breastmilk to be “the end of [her] journey.” After posting it last week, however, it gained the attention of thousands of Facebook users and national as well as international news outlets.
In the post, she writes that she was initially looking forward to breastfeeding, especially because she was unable to breastfeed Porter, her daughter. Once she learned of Samuel’s diagnosis she knew that wouldn’t be possible. Instead, she set a goal to pump until Samuel’s original due date, eventually collecting 500 ounces of milk.
Despite quickly finding out that pumping is not for the faint of heart and would require getting up in the middle of the night alone in a time she hoped she’d be sharing with her son, she pressed on.
“Every time I thought of quitting, I saw Samuel’s face,” she tells SheKnows, “And thought to myself, I would be doing this if he was here, and alive, so I’m going to keep doing it as if he was.” Strangfeld goes on to say that, while she couldn’t control Samuel’s life or death, pumping was something she could control. After pumping for 63 days, she donated all of it to a NICU milk bank.
While pumping was a way of fulfilling a promise she made to Samuel, the Facebook post inadvertently allowed her to fulfill another promise.
“We promised Samuel the world would know his name,” she says, “I didn’t know how and I didn’t know when and we can’t believe it was actually happening.” While many comments on her Facebook post praise Strangfeld for her work, the most meaningful thing for her is that the post and the news coverage are also raising awareness of Trisomy 18.
“If one more person is informed on Trisomy 18, then we did our job!” she explains. Considering how many people her story has reached, she has definitely done her job — and then some.
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