A mother knows, as her baby thrives inside her womb, that she is nurturing a life.

That life comes wailing into the world. Everything is formed, right down to a healthy fluttering heart. The mother holds her. The baby clings to her mother's chest, drinking in sleepy rhythm the food her mother's body was equipped to make for her. They remain connected. The mother is still her nourisher, the responsible one, her life-giver.

Doctors looked at Renee Noble's hospital chart and saw the 42-year-old was dying. Renee, pregnant with her fifth child, told them she was healing. Dying, she'd say, might just end up being part of that process.

Violet Noble grew inside a body being ravaged by ovarian cancer that had crept to her mother's liver. That liver swelled and crowded Violet in Renee's womb until Nov. 17, 2011, the day Violet was born to Renee in one solid, inspiring push.

Twenty-eight days later, Renee died. Or, as she saw it, continued the process of healing.

Violet kept thriving. Soon, it wouldn't be Renee's body that was supporting the baby but the bodies of women who had never felt Violet's breath against their chests.

Renee wanted her daughter to have breast milk for at least her first year. She wasn't preachy about nursing. It was how she had fed the four children before Violet, and it made sense to her. She was an earthy kind of momma, the type who tried not to have any trash to put out for collection at her home in Chatham, to use and reuse everything she could. She loved the Grafton Peace Pagoda, was getting her master's in social justice while she waitressed in Red Hook, and when she found out she had cancer that was not curable, turned down chemotherapy and conventional treatment, instead exploring Eastern medicine and homeopathy.

She was a single mom, her older two teenage girls, Scout and Maisy, splitting time between Renee and their father. She'd lost another daughter, Kayle, to a rare degenerative neurological disease in 1997, cradling the 5-year-old old on her lap as she watched her peacefully exit, forever changing Renee's outlook on death. Four-year-old Joaquin and Violet are the result of different relationships and don't have fathers in their lives.

She was active and athletic, taking the kids swimming and on hikes and playing soccer with them. When the girls were little, she'd push them for miles on peace walks. She worked and went to school so she could show her girls that a woman could follow her dreams and still be there for her family.

She never expected Violet.

After having an ovary removed because of what was believed to be a cyst, Renee thought she wouldn't be able to conceive. A biopsy later showed she had ovarian cancer. And not too long after that, Renee learned she was pregnant. She and her close friend Heidi Ricks absorbed the shock together. Heidi had been there when Kayle died, and when Scout and Maisy were born. Heidi had been at her side through births and through a death, Renee told her. Now, with terminal cancer and a baby on the way, she faced both at the same time.

They began to discuss whether Renee's body would be able to support a baby. They braced themselves for a possible miscarriage, but Violet grew strong as her mother became weaker.

Renee gave up graduate school to spend more time with her kids but continued waitressing through half the summer. By September, Heidi had moved in with her to help. Renee insisted on taking Joaquin trick-or-treating, giving him the chance to go door-to-door in his Transformers costume while Heidi pushed Renee in a wheelchair through some early snow.

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Eventually, Renee checked into St. Peter's to find some relief from the pain. She knitted hats for the preemies in the NICU. And she wrote about her experiences.

"(B)eing in so much pain is like another space; not a good place either. It is scary, confusing and I feel so alone and stuck; not knowing where to turn or where to go. Just trying to get away from it and not seeing any way to do that. ... I have faith that the pain I am feeling is love being sent to me. And even though it is difficult, I am lucky to have the chance to physically practice this. It goes beyond the faith or the mind-soothing techniques. It seems to encompass the whole human experience. ... The openings to being surrounded in love seem to be everywhere."

Renee fed Violet for a day, those first drops of golden milk going to the 4-pound bundle with a tiny head covered in downy black hair. She had talked St. Peter's NICU into allowing Violet milk she'd purchased from a breast milk bank so it would be ready for Violet if Renee's body was not.

She'd nursed her other children until they were 3. She hoped, at least, the family could continue to collect enough breast milk for Violet so that it would nourish her for her first year.

Breast milk banks, which collect and provide breast milk to mothers who can't supply it to their babies themselves, can be expensive, and word of Renee's wish began to spread through a blog, nursing mothers' Facebook walls and the offices of area midwives.

The issue of a mother's milk stirs emotions.

When a woman nurses, she enjoys the connection but also the responsibility of supplying the food. For at least a little while, there's no one else to take those late-night feedings, the relationship is an exclusive one, mother connected to child. And when another mother learns of that connection being broken, she is moved to help.

Nursing mothers from the Capital Region, from Vermont and from the Berkshires are among the women volunteering. Some come with coolers stocked with milk and their response means that Violet has enough support to fulfill Renee's desire. They offer the stored milk with health records or notes from their doctors, saying they are well enough to feed a child. The state Department of Health frowns on mothers swapping milk unless they go through licensed milk banks because of the potential for transmitting disease, but there's a community of nursing mothers that wants to do what feels natural to them.

Renee McAllister, a mom to a 10-month-old daughter in Albany, was one of them. It was important that her own daughter be fed the way she thought was best, so to think about the other Renee fading away with the knowledge she wouldn't be there to nurse her own baby, brings tears to McAllister's eyes.

A mother pumps milk for another woman's child because she's sat in the stillness of a nursery at night, a baby nestled in her arms, a small lamp casting just enough light for her to trace the outline of a tiny perfect nose nuzzled against her breast. She pumps because she's settled into a rocking chair listening to a sleepy baby snort softly as she drinks, and thought, "My God, my body is feeding this body."

Violet and her brother Joaquin live with Renee's brother now. And Violet drinks breast milk every day. None of the bodies that nourish her belong to Renee — she has moved onto another stage — but the milk that flows through Violet is from a mother's heart.

Reach Jennifer Gish at 454-5089 or jgish@timesunion.com.

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