Cancer survivor turns to neighbors for donated breast milk to feed newborn after double mastectomy
A 40-year-old cancer survivor is collecting breast milk from dozens of her Brooklyn neighbors to help feed her 3-week-old son.
Eva van Dok Pinkley can't nurse Oliver herself because of a double mastectomy. Twenty-five women have already stepped up, pumping milk and donating it to the Carroll Gardens mom.
"What they are doing, it's not easy to do," Pinkley said. "I'm just stunned at the amount of trouble that they are going through for me. I think of them and what they have done and give thanks."
The actress and researcher for "House Beautiful" magazine has endured multiple miscarriages and two rounds of failed fertility treatments. By the time she was diagnosed in April 2010 with noninvasive breast cancer, she had given up on having children of her own.
But a mere two months after her double-mastectomy, she got pregnant. Pinkley knew right away that if she carried the baby to full term, she wanted to use breast milk. She just hadn't figured out how.
Pinkley took to the Internet to research milk banks, milk donations, disease screening and milk pasteurization. She talked to doctors and lactation consultants, then started asking for donations at her yoga studio, through email listservs and through friends.
Women like Kristi Guigliano answered.
Guigliano, 30, is a former public defender, a current Cobble Hill piano teacher and mom to 8-month-old Giorgi.
"The first time Eva and I met, it was a very emotional thing to, first of all, have found someone so perfect, so close and so in need of the milk," Guigliano said.
The women helping Pinkley are a combination of ongoing donors, one-time donors and soon-to-be moms who have pledged milk if they have some to spare.
Pinkley's telecommunications engineer husband, Stuart, pounds the pavement picking up the donations on foot. This week, he'll go to Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill.
Oliver was born July 9, a silky-haired lump of cute with a voracious appetite. He sucks down ounce after precious ounce while cuddling with his mom in their 1-1/2-bedroom brick apartment.
Dozens of small milk containers sit in her kitchen freezer, next to the Trader Joe's pork dumplings and across from the gluten-free bread. She also has a 5-cubic-foot-deep freezer in the building's basement that is brimming with milk.
The basement storage room where the new mom keeps the second freezer belongs to Pinkley's downstairs neighbor, David Barnes, 46.
"When they told me what they were doing, I thought, 'Only in New York,'" said Barnes, a dad and sales executive. "I'm from Pennsylvania, and in my hometown, if you asked someone to donate milk they would have said, 'What the heck do you mean?'"
knelson@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...ivor_turns_to_neighbors_fo.html#ixzz1TPbJNbQW
A 40-year-old cancer survivor is collecting breast milk from dozens of her Brooklyn neighbors to help feed her 3-week-old son.
Eva van Dok Pinkley can't nurse Oliver herself because of a double mastectomy. Twenty-five women have already stepped up, pumping milk and donating it to the Carroll Gardens mom.
"What they are doing, it's not easy to do," Pinkley said. "I'm just stunned at the amount of trouble that they are going through for me. I think of them and what they have done and give thanks."
The actress and researcher for "House Beautiful" magazine has endured multiple miscarriages and two rounds of failed fertility treatments. By the time she was diagnosed in April 2010 with noninvasive breast cancer, she had given up on having children of her own.
But a mere two months after her double-mastectomy, she got pregnant. Pinkley knew right away that if she carried the baby to full term, she wanted to use breast milk. She just hadn't figured out how.
Pinkley took to the Internet to research milk banks, milk donations, disease screening and milk pasteurization. She talked to doctors and lactation consultants, then started asking for donations at her yoga studio, through email listservs and through friends.
Women like Kristi Guigliano answered.
Guigliano, 30, is a former public defender, a current Cobble Hill piano teacher and mom to 8-month-old Giorgi.
"The first time Eva and I met, it was a very emotional thing to, first of all, have found someone so perfect, so close and so in need of the milk," Guigliano said.
The women helping Pinkley are a combination of ongoing donors, one-time donors and soon-to-be moms who have pledged milk if they have some to spare.
Pinkley's telecommunications engineer husband, Stuart, pounds the pavement picking up the donations on foot. This week, he'll go to Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill.
Oliver was born July 9, a silky-haired lump of cute with a voracious appetite. He sucks down ounce after precious ounce while cuddling with his mom in their 1-1/2-bedroom brick apartment.
Dozens of small milk containers sit in her kitchen freezer, next to the Trader Joe's pork dumplings and across from the gluten-free bread. She also has a 5-cubic-foot-deep freezer in the building's basement that is brimming with milk.
The basement storage room where the new mom keeps the second freezer belongs to Pinkley's downstairs neighbor, David Barnes, 46.
"When they told me what they were doing, I thought, 'Only in New York,'" said Barnes, a dad and sales executive. "I'm from Pennsylvania, and in my hometown, if you asked someone to donate milk they would have said, 'What the heck do you mean?'"
knelson@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...ivor_turns_to_neighbors_fo.html#ixzz1TPbJNbQW
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