When a baby is born, a mother’s breast milk helps the child grow safe and healthy. But many new moms have trouble breastfeeding their newborns.
A newly opened dispensary at HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in O’Fallon, Illinois, is offering donated milk to families in the Metro East who need breast milk for their babies.
The hospital opened the dispensary after a lactation nurse found many of her patients were having trouble breastfeeding but didn’t know where to find donor milk in the region, said Amanda Schaefer, the manager of the hospital’s women and infants center.
“To my knowledge, from when you cross over into Illinois from Missouri, and then all the way up until Carbondale, there's not a dispensary,” she said. “So this is a very wide range of people that we can reach.”
Children’s health advocates and medical experts — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — recommend newborns consume breast milk for the first six months of life. Breast milk is associated with health benefits, including lower rates of certain infections.
But some mothers either can’t breastfeed or don’t create enough milk for their babies, Schaefer said. Others need a few days to get the hang of breastfeeding before they can nurse on their own.
That’s a situation in which donated milk can be helpful, said Susan Urbanski, program manager for Mothers' Milk Bank of the Western Great Lakes, the nonprofit milk bank that collects and pasteurizes the milk from donors around the region before it's sent back to St. Elizabeth’s and other dispensaries.
“Maybe your baby is having some issues with blood sugar or a little bit of jaundice. Or maybe you haven't quite sorted out how to breastfeed yet,” she said. “Supplementing with donor milk can help them to meet their own feeding goals without having to supplement with formula.”
Many formulas are cow-milk based, said Dee Kassing, a leader with the La Leche League of Greater St. Louis, a group of volunteers who teach new families about breastfeeding.
“Breast milk is made for human babies. Cow’s milk is made for cow’s babies,” she said. “We have different immune systems … breast milk is designed for who we are.”
Often, donated milk is mixed from different donor mothers, Kassing said. Because each donor has a slightly different immune system, the milk that’s sent to dispensaries can be very beneficial in helping a newborn gain protection against infections and other health problems.
People don’t need to be a patient at the hospital to use the milk bank, Schaefer said. If community members show an emergency need for milk, they’ll be able to buy the milk for $25 for a 4-ounce bottle — about two days’ worth of milk for a newborn baby.
The milk dispensary is designed for short-term use, she said. People can only buy 10 bottles at a time. The milk is kept frozen until it’s ready to use.
The milk at the St. Elizabeth's dispensary comes from donors around the Midwest. Before it’s bottled and sold at the hospital, it's sent to a Mothers' Milk Western Great Lakes processing facility in northern Illinois, where it's pasteurized to remove viruses and bacteria. A third party tests the milk for safety, then it’s sent back to dispensaries in Illinois and Wisconsin.
“The milk bank is doing all the testing, the pasteurizing, to make sure it's safe for the community,” Schaefer said. “And then these babies get to reap the benefits of that milk, which is amazing.”
