Milk banks: Sharing the gift of breastmilk

From Erin:

I was very lucky to be a successful breastfeeding mom. There were several factors that made this possible - confidence, information, support, and luck. The confidence was a gift from my mother, who had breastfed two babies. She made it sound natural and easy. While I knew that for many mothers it *isn't* easy or natural, I needed to know this was possible, so I could have confidence in my body's ability to produce and provide milk to my baby boy, D. Information came from books - my mother's lovingly-kept '70s "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" and "Breastfeeding Made Simple". These books taught me about supply-and-demand, colostrum, mastitis, and feeding on demand, not on schedule. Books can't teach about a latch, however, hard as they try. I learned about latching from the patient nurses at my birth center and from the lactation consultants that my loving husband insisted that I go to when little D. started screaming and turning away from my breasts at two weeks old.

The lactation consultant, watching me nurse D., suggested that perhaps I had an overabundant milk supply; the force of the let-down might be choking him. She recommended that I start pumping before feeding him. I followed her advice and it worked beautifully (except for the part where I was getting out of bed every two hours in the middle of the night to hook myself up to the electric pump before nursing!). My constant pumping meant that soon enough my freezer was overflowing with bags of milk, and soon I was going to have to start dumping it. At this point, my doula mentioned in passing that the mid-sized city where I lived had a Milk Bank, and suggested that I consider donating.

Most women don't know about Milk Banks. It sounds strange, like a Red Cross truck that comes around with pumps instead of needles, passing out juice and cookies to donating moms. It's not like that, of course, but the milk, like blood, goes to critical ill babies, most of whom are preemies in NICUs across the country. Any doctor can write a perscription for donated milk, so even a normally-breastfeeding mom can get milk for a time if she, for example, needs to be on a medication that isn't compatible with breastfeeding. She doesn't need to stop, if she can get to the milk (or it can get to her). But preemies are the prime candidates for donor milk. The benefits of breastmilk for NCIU babies are even higher than full-term, healthy babies because preemies have much more fragile immune systems. I've done a lot of reading on the internet, mostly stories of mothers whose babies were born too soon.

Their fears and hopes and stresses and sufferings are heartwrenching, especially when compounded by the fact that many mothers of preterm babies experience agonizing struggles getting their milk in. Some are able to make it work eventually, others can't, either for medical, physical, or personal reasons. Reading those stories moved me inexpressibly. Every mother, I thought, should be able to give her sick baby breast milk, if she wants to, even if she can't express it from her own body.

So I contacted the lovely women at my local milk bank who walked me through the donor program. Donors must go through screening, which monitors the physical health of the donor mother's own baby, as well as the donor's psychological health, and finally her physical health, through a blood test that's put through extensive screening to make sure the donor is free from any communicable disease. Donors are sent strict instructions about medications and other issues that require delays before pumping donated milk. The milk, once collected, is sent to the central site, where it is mixed together with other donor milk, in order to make sure that the milk has the proper balance of foremilk and creamy milk. It is also pasteurized, so it is completely safe for immunocompromised babies.

I was a milk donor for six months. In addition to feeding D., I could supply the Milk Bank with about 100 ounces per two weeks, with twice-daily pumpings. Pumping twice a day in addition to the full round of nursing D. was not easy. But I was a stay-at-home mom, which helped a great deal. Being a stay at home mom of a new baby can be isolating and lonely. It was both for me. But every time I pumped, I thought of babies in the NICU and their parents, about how lucky I was to have a healthy baby whom I could nurse, how proud and humbled I felt to be apart of the Milk Bank community. It connected me to a larger world of mothers; even though I would never meet any of them, I felt close to them. I felt like I was part of a larger world of mothers supporting and helping each other, which seemed like the most important thing in the world.

Breastfeeding mothers need support, but they can also give support - through warm words to other breastfeeding moms, by donating surplus milk, by refusing to judge mothers who don't breastfeed for whatever reason.

If you have surplus milk and a new baby, consider donation. It is a beautiful gift to give another family. It can even save a life. If your baby is born preterm, know that Milk Banks exist. Look into it and consider if it might work for you and your family.

For more information:

http://www.hmbana.org/