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After giving birth to her son, Noah, three years ago and experiencing a miscarriage just a year prior, 25-year-old Ariel Matthews couldn’t be more excited for the birth of her third son, Ronan.
Matthews’ pregnancy proceeded smoothly, and her doctor at one point even told her that it was one of the healthiest pregnancies she’d seen, until Matthews reached her 20th week.
That was when doctors discovered that Ronan’s heart wasn’t developing properly and there was very little chance that he would survive for long after birth. But even knowing these odds, Matthews decided to continue her pregnancy until her son was born – just to give him a chance.
Ronan was eventually born, but as the doctors predicted, he was struggling to survive.
Just 11 days after he was born, doctors told Matthews with certainty that he wouldn’t make it.
In that moment, Matthews knew what she was going to do. “I decided right away to donate [my breast milk], because I knew [my son] wasn’t going to make it, she explained.
This wasn’t the first time Matthews had decided to make such a selfless decision during a time of her own loss. After the birth of her stillborn son a year ago, Matthews had also donated her breast milk, and even following the birth of her first son, Matthews had also chosen to donate some of her extra breast milk.
Over the course of the past few years, Matthews has now donated over 2,810 ounces of breast milk – a total that weighs more than she does.
“Thanks to my sweet Ronan I was able to bless three babies with milk,” she wrote in the caption of one of her Instagram posts. “After I empty out my freezer, 2,300 of those ounces will have been officially donated. I defiantly feel lucky to have been able to help babies stay healthy, and grow.”
Matthews said that one of the best parts about donating her milk is “get[ting] hugs from the moms when they came to pick it up and thank yous,” Matthews says. “And that the moms were trusting me to give their babies my milk — it feels really good.”
