Stepping Way Out of My Comfort Zone – Breast Milk Donation

Special thank you to Phillips Avent for supplying breast milk storage bags for review.

As I watched the frozen milk supply start to take over my freezer, I started to dump my extra supply of expressed breast milk since my supply had gotten so far ahead of my daughter.  Every full & untouched bottle I’d pour down the sink, I’d feel guilty knowing how many moms would almost kill for that liquid gold.  I was quickly filling my Phillips Avent Breast Milk Storage Bags.

I started to entertain the idea of milk donation as more of my friends quietly mentioned it.  There are milk banks that accept the donations, pasteurize it and make it available to NICUs.  You can go here for one example of an organization that does that.  With my middle child, I had a freezer full of breastmilk that I never used because I was pumping fulltime and was getting about 80oz a day!  This time because I am latching and pumping, I had allowed my supply to decrease because I knew from my past experience I didn’t need it all!  I’d always wondered about milk donation but never got around to it.

Another form of milk donation tugged at my heat strings.  I had seen it referred a number of time in breastfeeding groups and other mom groups, so on a whim one day I followed the California page for Human Milk 4 Human Babies page on Facebook.   I watched requests go through my Facebook feed for a couple weeks and thought maybe one day if I saw a local request, I would raid my freezer stash that has been untouched for months.

Then I saw the request go through for someone in my small city.  I messaged her, knowing nothing about how it all works, but simply saying I had a great supply and was willing to give it to her as well as continue to give her any extra I had from pumping.  She is unable to pump due to a medication she takes and feels a tremendous guilt not being able to breastfeed her son.  You see for as much as they hammer home the importance of breastfeeding… some of us cannot and they feel tremendous guilt about it.  That’s the last thing new moms need – guilt.  She is tremendously appreciative of the breast milk I am sharing with her.

The anxiety I had- not knowing anything about her or her infant son has now turned in to a mission of mine to increase my milk enough to share about 80 ounces a week.  It’s stepping out of my comfort zone… WAY out of my comfort zone.  But, somehow it feels right and I’m now working hard to build my supply up even further because I’m on a mission to help this woman give her preemie infant more liquid gold.  As of today I’m close to sharing 150 oz (extra) with her.  Never in a million years did I think I’d be doing something like this!