Before your little one arrived, you may have assumed that you’d be able to breastfeed from birth. If you were lucky, once you started nursing you had no trouble at all producing enough milk for your baby, and then some — leaving you wondering if there’s something you could do with all your extra milk.
On the other hand, maybe you found that, like many moms, you ran into more trouble nursing than you anticipated and are looking for alternative ways to feed your baby breast milk.
Either way, there’s a solution that might work for you: breast milk sharing. Whether you’re donating or receiving breast milk, it’s important to come up with a plan that works for you and that your doctor approves.
Here’s what you need to know about sharing breast milk, from how it’s done to what’s safe.
Can you donate breast milk?
Most healthy, lactating women can be potential candidates to donate breast milk to a milk bank, including surrogate and recently bereaved mothers.
Meeting certain criteria, however, will make a woman ineligible. According to the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) donor screening guidelines, you may not be able to donate or may have to defer donating if you:
- Smoke or use tobacco products or illegal recreational drugs
- Take non-approved medications
- Test positive for HIV, HTLV, hepatitis B or C, or syphilis or are at risk of having a bloodborne illness
- Recently received a blood transfusion or organ or tissue transplant
- Have had potential exposure to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Have tattoos, body piercings or permanent makeup
- Are a vegan who does not supplement with vitamin B12
- Have an at-risk sexual partner
- Consume alcohol
Many banks require that women be able to donate a certain number of ounces, particularly if you’re shipping your milk to the bank (instead of dropping it off in person).
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You may also be asked to defer donating if you or another member or your household currently has cold or flu-like symptoms.
As for frozen breast milk? If you have already-frozen milk that you’re looking to donate, you may be able to share it with an HMBANA-accredited bank. However, you’ll need to verify that the pumped milk was collected and stored according to the bank’s standards, since improper storage can degrade the quality of the milk or create the risk for bacterial contamination.
Keep in mind, too, that even pumped milk that was collected and stored properly has a shelf life. While frozen milk is considered safe for use at home for up to 12 months, many banks have shorter limits on the amount of time milk can spend in the freezer before being donated. If you’re unsure about your local bank’s policy, call them and ask.
Is donated breast milk safe?
Donated milk provides babies with many of the same benefits as the milk they’d get from nursing, which can be especially beneficial for high-risk infants or those born at a very low weight, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
And when it’s obtained through an accredited milk bank, it can be an effective alternative, says the AAP. Donor organizations like HMBANA follow strict, standardized protocols that have been developed in partnership with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the AAP. These protocols ensure that donors are adequately screened and that milk is stored and processed in a way that reduces potential risk to babies.
The FDA maintains that the choice to feed your baby donor milk is an individual one best made with your child’s pediatrician. If you opt to use donor milk, only use milk from a source that has screened its donors and taken steps to ensure the safety of its milk supply, the FDA says.
You should avoid taking pumped milk directly from another person or through informal sharing set-ups online, says the AAP and the FDA. Even if the milk is coming from someone you know and trust, informal sharing can potentially expose your baby to bacterial contamination or viruses like cytomegalovirus, hepatitis, or HIV, the AAP notes. Your baby could also be exposed to medications and other drugs or substances.
How and where to donate breast milk
You know you’ll be pumping and packing up your milk, but what else is involved? While the process might differ slightly from one milk bank to the next, in general, you can expect HMBANA-accredited banks to follow this process.
- Contact the milk bank for pre-screening. You’ll be asked a list of questions to get to know a little bit about you and your baby, your general health, and how much milk you’ll be able to donate.
- Complete donor forms. To determine your eligibility, you’ll answer questions about your current health and health history, lifestyle, and medication use.
- Have a blood test. Potential donors are screened for HIV, hepatitis B and C, HTLV, and syphilis. The milk bank will give you instructions for having your blood drawn and will cover the cost of the test.
- Become an approved donor. Once your forms and bloodwork have been reviewed, you’ll be notified about whether you’re eligible to donate.
- Safely share your milk. Your bank will provide you with instructions for clean, safe milk collection (like washing your hands and properly cleaning your pump and pump parts) and where and how to store your milk after it’s been pumped. Depending on your bank and where you live, you may be able to drop the milk off directly to the bank or arrange for it to be picked up. If your milk needs to be shipped, the bank will cover the cost of shipping and provide you with supplies (like dry ice) and instructions for how to ship your milk overnight to ensure it stays fresh during transit.
The Human Milk Banking Association of North America has 31 member nonprofit milk banks around the country where lactating women can donate.
HBMBANA-accredited banks follow strict protocols to ensure the safety of their donor milk and may supply milk to local hospitals. They also have a priority list of babies and moms they must give the milk to in order of importance. First on the list are premature babies and sick, hospitalized infants; then sick babies who are no longer in the hospital but are failing to thrive or suffering from another condition.
As for donating through a non-accredited organization or group, or even directly to a friend? Informal set-ups abound through local mom groups, social media or just word of mouth. But donating or receiving milk this way isn’t recommended, according to the AAP and the FDA.
Donating outside of an accredited bank means donors haven’t undergone adequate health screening. And milk may not be collected, stored and processed properly to ensure that it’s safe.
Where to find donated breast milk
HMBANA-accredited banks follow strict screening, processing, and storage protocols to ensure the safety of their milk supply. That makes them the best choice for finding donated milk for your baby. You can also check with your local hospital, which may provide milk through a partnership with a local or regional HMBANA bank.
For-profit milk banks may be another option to consider, and may also donate to local hospitals. However, the protocols developed by commercial banks may not be as stringent as those developed by HMBANA, which could potentially impact the quality of the milk a family receives, some experts warn.
Whether you opt to obtain milk from a nonprofit or for-profit bank, you’ll need to get a prescription from your doctor. Once you have the prescription, it’s worth contacting several different banks so you’re on multiple milk banks’ lists for donor milk. Keep in mind, too, that your ability to get milk may depend on your baby’s health. Although it’s possible for moms with healthy babies to get milk from a nonprofit, moms with needy babies are first in line — and the demand well exceeds the current supply.
Also know that buying breast milk from both nonprofit and commercial banks is expensive: The cost of donor breast milk varies but typically costs between $3 and $5 an ounce, which goes toward the processing, handling and distribution of the milk. The average newborn takes in between 2 to 3 ounces of milk per day for every pound she weighs — which means if you have a 10-pound baby, you might be spending $65 or more per day.
Some health insurance plans, however, cover the cost of buying donated breast milk, so check with yours. Milk banks can sometimes also help with the costs if your insurance won’t.
The waitlists and costs mean that obtaining donor milk from a bank isn’t always easy. Even so, you should avoid getting milk from informal setups, like through an online group or a friend. While individual donors may have the best intentions at heart, getting donor milk this way can put your baby at risk for getting sick.
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