Share the Love! Or in this case, Milk!

An old friend with whom I used to have some crazy fun adventures pre-marriage, pre-kids while we were living in nyc, recently had her second little babe.  A super abundant milk maker, she had lots and lots and lots extra and contacted me about donating it.  I talked her through the pros and cons of donating to a milk bank (more on this below), and then mentioned milk sharing via Facebook.

My friend, went forward with the Facebook option and I gave her the names of two different milk sharing pages:  "Human Milk for Human Babies" and "Eats on Feets".  Sharing milk on these sites is free.  In fact it is illegal to sell your breast milk.  Instead, it's all about sharing the love (or in this case, milk)!

There may be more milk sharing resources out there, but I don't know of them yet.  If you do, please post in comments!  Both of these groups have a page for every state where milk sharing is happening.  My friend found the Human Milk for Human Babies page for Southern California where she lives, and proceeded to find a family in need of her milk.

I just received this message from her:

"Meagan, I thought I'd update you that I ended up finding a woman from Orange County on Human Milk 4 Human Babies.  She had triplets 6 weeks ago at 32 weeks. They are all home now and her husband came and picked up approximately 4 gallons of my breast milk for them.  She had priced out purchasing breast milk via a bank and it was over $4K for the triplets for the first month.  Was great to find someone locally to help out!"

This made me so happy!  Proud of her!  Proud of me for knowing the resource even existed!

***Note:  There is nothing bad about using a milk bank; in fact milk banks are amazing and they don't make a profit on your milk donations, but the cost of pasteurizing the milk for donation is high and therefore, parents have to pay for the milk.  The pasteurization of the milk, while ensuring there is no spread of infectious disease via shared milk, does kill a lot of the really good stuff that fresh human milk contains.  So using milk bank milk has its pros and its cons.

My husband and I did use a milk bank for our daughter.  It was $$$, but we only had to do it for a few weeks for one baby while I got my lactation issues resolved.  And if I had known about milk sharing outside the bank, I probably would have gone that route instead.  The choice is personal, but the important thing to know is that if you are struggling to feed your babe at the breast, there is milk out there for you!