This is Beautiful: You Can Find a Baby Who Needs Your Breast Milk

Talk about shared motherhood! This Goan woman in America shared her breast milk with another woman’s baby.

When Amber D Souza – a Goan who lives in the US – had her baby 18 months ago, she was overjoyed at the prospect of breastfeeding.

But as luck would have it, her son refused to latch on: his blood glucose levels kept dropping and he was placed in the NICU. Amber, still adamant to feed him only breast milk, started to pump from the second day itself. She tried everything – from lactation advice to skin to skin with baby – but it was two months before her son started nursing.

Amber had pumped bottles and bottles of breast milk by then and had discovered she had, what was called an over-supply. She could pump close to 20 ounces in minutes. Once her son started nursing, she started to pump and store the extra. Soon, her freezer had no more space and she guiltily began dumping it.

One day, she found out how her hair dresser had found a milk donor for her baby when she was forced to stop nursing. Curious, Amber did a little research and knew she wanted to donate her breast milk.

That someone would have to pay for breast milk that is pretty much every child’s right, didn’t sit well with me. I came across two Facebook pages, ‘Human milk for human babies’ and ‘Eats on Feets’ where one could donate directly to babies in need. No money was involved and donations were at one’s own discretion and trust. People had to simply post one’s need for milk or offer to donate.

Amber D Souza, 32-year-old mother

Her mum was more than happy with her decision – apparently Amber had been nursed by a Lebanese neighbour when she had fallen sick. So Amber herself was a donor milk baby in a way!

“After my first donation, I felt a sense of achievement, as if life had come full circle and that I had passed on the generosity shown to me,” she adds.

The Love of Multiple Moms

A dentist by profession, Amber felt a change in perspective after donating milk. She had grumbled about her over-supply until she met mothers who burst out crying in gratitude. These were parents of sick babies to mothers who were fighting cancer and undergoing chemotherapy.

From same sex parents to a baby born to a drug addict in jail, each of the many babies and their parents enriched Amber’s life. Jamie Mullenhour, mother of one of the babies who received Amber’s milk for a year, says,

I had to stop pumping milk seven months after having Channing, owing to a hectic work schedule. Formula feed didn’t suit my child. Amber selflessly provided thousands of ounces to my daughter for an entire year. I can confidently say we’ve given Channing the love and nourishment of multiple moms.

Jamie Mullenhour

Recently, Amber made her last donation of over 1000 ounces. It was a bittersweet moment for her as well as her husband, who had washed bottles and breast pump parts, bottled and bagged and boxed and frozen breast milk every day for more than a year.

While this heartwarming story is from the US, in India, Arthy Madhevan helped a sick child in Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu. The child was just 1.2 kg, had no inner tongue and would have died without breast milk.

“With an ailing mother and no inner tongue, the child couldn’t breast feed. So I pumped my milk for her; I pumped 30 ounces every 2 hours, 8 times a day for 2 months. Within 10 days, her brain started working, mucus in her blood reduced, she gained 2.6 kg. At 7 months today, she can sit with support and has undergone a heart surgery successfully,” Arthy shares.

She calls it her good fortune to be able to have helped.

India is Fast Rising on the Milk Bank Map

Dr Armida Fernandez, retired professor of neonatology, Sion Hospital, Mumbai, was the pioneer behind India’s first milk bank.

“25 years back, we were one of the few hospitals with an NICU and we got a large number of high risk babies. I had seen mother’s milk being shared in Oxford back in 1989, so I knew it could be done here. With just Rs 5 lakh, I set up Asia’s first milk bank in our hospital. Till date, every baby born here gets human milk that has been expressed, pasteurised and stored. Nowadays, we have women who come in to donate out of free will,” Dr Fernandez says.

There are approximately 25 milk banks in India today, but no awareness. It is upto willing mothers to find out about the nearest milk banks and offer help. As Amber puts it,

You will be extremely happy if you have decided to donate milk. It is only human to pass on the goodness of breast milk to those in need.

Amber D Souza

(Runa Mukherjee Parikh has written on women, culture, social issues, education and animals, with The Times of India, India Today and IBN Live. When not hounding for stories, she can be found petting dogs, watching sitcoms or travelling. A big believer in ‘animals come before humans’, she is currently struggling to make sense of her Bengali-Gujarati lifestyle in Ahmedabad.)