| credit: Rich Gold / Alamy |
After a camera crew recorded the moment, the footage was shown on Nightline the following year, and shows Hayek sitting down with the young boy and feeding him.
In the footage, the From Dusk Till Dawn says: "He was very hungry – I was weaning my daughter Valentina, but I still had a lot of milk, so I breast-fed the baby."
| Credit: REUTERS / Alamy |
"It was amazing because he’s really looking at me and he’s very little," she says in the footage. "My baby is one year so she can suck a lot harder."
She then opened up about her thought process behind the gesture, saying: "I thought about it, am I being disloyal to my child by giving my milk away? I actually think my baby would be very proud to be able to share her milk and when she grows up I will make sure she continues to share and be generous caring person."
ABC News reported at the time that Sierra Leone had the highest infant mortality rate in the world, and that Hayek wanted to combat the stigma that is often placed on women for breastfeeding.
Nearly a decade later, Hayek recalled the moment once again while accepting an award at the UNICEF Ball.
Amazing. @salmahayek talks about breastfeeding another woman’s baby in Sierra Leone. @UNICEFUSA pic.twitter.com/jE88HToObp
— Marc Malkin (@marcmalkin) April 15, 2018Related Articles
"This 15-year-old girl is sobbing and shaking with a newborn baby and she said, 'Please help me. I need milk,'" Hayek told the audience. "We had so many things but we didn’t have milk - except I remembered that I had milk because I was weening my daughter.
"I just weened my daughter from breastfeeding not long ago and I said, 'I got milk.' I sat down and I breastfed this baby.'"
| Credit: ABC |
"There was a lot of people that were upset I did that," she told CBS News' John Blackstone.
Hayek has been known for her charity work for three decades, and through the Salma Hayek Foundation, she is also helping to support disadvantaged children on the streets of Mexico and women who have been victims of domestic abuse.
