Salma Hayek Breastfeeding

On a recent trip to Sierra Leone with Nightline Crew, actress Salma Hayek stumbled upon a starving baby of a woman who's can't to breast-feed. Newspapers from Europe to Australia have made headlines out of a portion of the story in which Hayek breastfeeds another woman's newborn son on camera.

Hayek, 42, was touring a hospital in the war-torn country when she found a mother unable to feed her infant.

Without hesitation, the Mexican-born actress began feeding the baby boy in front of TV cameras for US current affairs program Nightline.

Hayek said her decision to breastfeed another woman's child was an attempt to diminish the stigma placed on women for breast feeding. At the time she was still breastfeeding her 1-year-old daughter.

Hayek told McFadden that that the idea of helping a child in this way had a long tradition in her family. She related a story about her great-grandmother many years ago in Mexico saving the starving baby of a stranger by breastfeeding the child.

'The baby was perfectly healthy, but the mother did not have any milk," Hayek said.

"He was very hungry … I was weaning my [one-year-old] daughter Valentina, but I still had a lot of milk, so I breastfed the baby."

The Wild Wild West star and UNICEF spokesperson told reporters that she was inspired by her great-grandmother who once performed a similar act in a Mexican village.

"They found a woman in the street inconsolably crying and the baby was also crying, crying, crying," she said.

"My great-grandmother went up to her and said 'What is the matter?' and the mother said, 'She is very, very hungry and I have no more milk'.

"And in the street, my great-grandmother took the baby and breastfed that baby who instantly stopped crying and went peacefully to sleep.

"It was amazing [that I could do the same] because I was really impressed by [her] story."

In November, Hayek joked that she was addicted to breastfeeding.

"I'm like an alcoholic. It is like, I don't care if I cry, I don't care if I am fat, I am just going to do it for one more week, one more month, and then when I see how much good it is doing her and I can't stop," she said.

The clip of Hayek nursing a very hungry baby boy (ironically born on the same day as her own daughter) has surfaced on YouTube as well as on dozens of other web sites, drawing thousands of comments.

The actress and producer was told by doctors in Sierra Leone that many mothers stop breastfeeding their infants within the first few months after birth because of pressure from their husbands. Tradition has it, in some areas, that it is not acceptable to have sexual relations with breast feeding women.

Sierra Leone, located in West Africa, has the highest child death rate in the world. Twenty percent of children die before reaching their fifth birthday.

Sierra Leone has the highest infant mortality rate in the world, in part fueled by malnutrition. Physicians there told Hayek they would like to see mothers breastfeed for a full two years but that stigma too often gets in the way.

What Others Are Saying

A blogger on EW.com, the web site for Entertainment Weekly, declared the video clip winner of the "biggest eyebrow-raiser award" and called Hayek cool "because her left breast has now done more for humanity in a few minutes than I've done in roughly my life."

People commenting on mom and parenting web sites also had kudos for Hayek. "I got warm fuzzies when I saw this video," wrote Ribbiee78 on iVillage.com. "Awesome, just awesome. Even that little bit will help this baby boy."

Jennifer Perillo, who is the food editor at Working Mother magazine and writes blogs for NYC Moms Blog, The Mama Chronicles and The Daily Juggle, called Hayek's act "one of the greatest gifts you can give...a piece of yourself." Perillo is currently nursing her nine-month old baby.

She's also happy to see the attention shifted away from the octuplets mom. "Here's one person using her body to feed whatever emotional issues she has," Perillo said about Nadya Suleman, who added eight babies to the six she already had. "The flip side is a woman whose body is producing something naturally who is actually using it in such a powerful and positive way."

What a nice gal!