Breastfeeding Yolanda Babies: The Soldier As Proxy Mom

Corporal Anjannete Obligado only went to the makeshift hospital at the Tacloban airport to bring a woman who had passed out after hours of lining up for a seat in a C130 flight out of the city.

The next thing the lady soldier knew, she was breastfeeding babies of evacuees.

At the hospital, Obligado saw a bloodied woman lying down with her baby in a corner. The woman had just given birth. It was November 11, just 3 days after Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit the city.

Obligado, a new mom herself, approached the woman. "We talked and we cried together," Obligado narrated to Rappler over the weekend.

She learned that the woman's husband was working in Bacolod City and, at that time, didn't know his wife had given birth.

One look at the woman's baby and Obligado knew she had to help. She asked for permission to breastfeed the baby, and the mother couldn't be more thankful. Hungry and thirsty, she had no milk for her newborn.

The soldier mom fed two other babies after that.