Breast Is Best If You Are Stranded Alone In The Woods And Need To Drink Your Own Milk To Survive

A woman who got lost in the woods while running a race in New Zealand this week was lucky to have some emergency sustenance while she waited to be rescued, because she was able to drink her own breast milk while she covered herself with dirt in an attempt to stay warm.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, 29-year-old fitness instructor Susan O’Brien has an eight-month-old baby whom she is still breastfeeding. Sunday morning, she took off with 422 other runners participating in the XTERRA Wellington Trail Running Series in the Rimutaka Forest Park. O’Brien was expected to finish the race by around 11:30 a.m., or about two hours after it began, but she never crossed the finish line. As they realized she had not returned, a rescue search was launched and her family started to panic. A search party and dogs were sent out after her, and runners who had finished the race went back to retrace their steps for any sign of her.

It turns out O’Brien had made a wrong turn and gotten terribly lost in the woods and was completely unable to find her way back. It started to get dark and cold, and O’Brien was just wearing the clothes she’d planned on running the race in, so she started digging a hole to stay in and keep warm.

“I just kept chucking dirt on top of me,” she said. “I definitely thought I was going to die.”

To keep herself going, O’Brien drank some of her own breast milk. She also reportedly had two liters of water and an energy bar with her while she was lost in the woods overnight with no indication that she would ever be rescued.

O’Brien said she just hid in her hole overnight and screamed for help whenever she heard a sound nearby. Luckily, she was found and airlifted out by helicopter at around 11:30 Monday morning, 24 hours after she was expected to have finished the race.

The first thing she did after being reunited with her family was to breastfeed her daughter, who had surely been anxiously awaiting her mother’s return.

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