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When 29-year-old Natasha Fogarty became pregnant with her son, Milo, she decided that she wanted to breastfeed him for 12 months. It was a personal decision that she’d made for herself and wanted nothing more than to stick to it.
She never expected something to keep her from doing so.
One month before Milo was born, she discovered a lump in her right breast. Fogarty admits, she “thought it was just [her] milk coming in. My boobs were getting lumpy and different, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to worry about it.’”
After Milo was born, the bump was long forgotten because her breasts had gotten even larger and all her attention was focused on breastfeeding Milo. But every time she breastfed him, “that particular bump would never go away. I’d push it around, thinking it was a clog…”
That was when Fogarty finally decided to see a doctor. She saw an obstetrician, who sent her to get an ultrasound, then a mammogram, and finally a biopsy.
Fogarty received the results of all her tests on a Friday while at work.
She was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer.
Fogarty and her husband “cried a lot” in the initial days after the diagnosis, but managed to move forward quickly with their doctors. Their medical team scheduled Fogarty a single mastectomy and even invited her to visit a fertility specialist to figure out when she could have another child after her cancer treatment was complete.
This wasn’t the only preparation Fogarty completed before her procedure.
Because her cancer was now forcing her to stop breastfeeding Milo at 5 months – rather than at 12 months – Fogarty wanted to commemorate her final day of breastfeeding with a professional photoshoot. She “loved breastfeeding more than anything in the world. It was [her] favorite thing to do. …[she] never wanted to stop.”
A local photographer, Kari Dallas of Vintage Lens Photography in St. Louis, Missouri, offered to do the job for Fogarty, free of charge.
Fogarty has since shared these photos on the Facebook page, Breastfeeding Mama Talk, in hopes of raising awareness of breast cancer in other young moms and serving as inspiration for other mothers who might be going through their own struggles. She is currently in her 24th week of chemotherapy.
