Milk Bank Difficulties and beyond...

I have a massive milk supply. I have a passion for breast milk so as soon as I went back to work and realized that all I was doing was adding to my freezers supply instead of taking from it, I decided to continue to pump extra and donate the milk. I have to say that the majority of the time has been pretty frustrating. It was frustrating to me at first to donate 400+ ounces to one donor and just have her husband run off with the milk with hardly even a thank you and not even a replacement of all the milk bags I used up. Because of that I decided to donate to the milk bank. Of course it took at least a month for me to get accepted as a donor and get the cooler and by that point I had like 700 ounces. I had a lot of difficulty getting them to replace my milk bags. Then I gave them another 300 ounces. They finally got me some more milk bags, but still not as many as I used. And then came the most painful part: they inform me that they WON'T TAKE MY MILK!!! So I donate 1000 ounces of milk and they THROW IT ALL AWAY!!! Why? because it had "bacillus" in it..an ordinary, everyday, 99% most likely chance to be harmless. It just happens to be a strain that doesn't "pasteurize out." My milk was fresh (while of course still being frozen). I immediately freeze it after pumping it and it was all good. A HUGE waste. Thus I warn anyone who is considering donating to a milk bank to NOT! It is a huge waste of time. Donate locally and to families. Milk banks are a good concept, but the realities of them are just as much full of red tape and waste as the rest of American society. I have since donated to two great women, one from the website and one locally who could not produce enough milk with great success (and no adverse reactions from any of the babies by the way). I am now going back to school in the fall and will be starting back on some medication so will retire my donations , but I'm pretty sure in all I've donated about 3000 ounces of milk (unforunately that does include the wasted 1000 by the milk bank). So anyway, just my 2 cents of being a donor. It's amazing all in all, but can be pretty painful sometimes

Wow, I am so sorry to hear that. I would have DEMANDED they send it back to me. That is ridiculous! They should have some sort of process where you send a sample bag to them and they test it before they accept a whole box.

However, I am not a fan of milk banks in general. They charge a ridiculous, unacceptable amount of money per ounce. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Milkshare. I honestly hope that this website will become much more popular than going to a milk bank.

Best of luck to you and I hope the rest of your time goes more smoothly.

WOW. I can't believe they threw out 1000 oz. I'm just starting to donate and have 66 oz so far for the family I am giving to and I would be heartbroken if it was just thrown out. I prefer to have a relationship with the family/families I end up donating to and to know which babies are getting my milk. The family I am giving my milk to is super appreciative and they haven't even met me yet. They sent me 150 great Lansinoh milk storage bags AND are even sending me a new pump since I hand express and don't want me to wear my hands out (I didn't even ask - they are so thoughtful - hopefully it will help!!!) It took a lot of time for me to HAND express those 66 oz. I can't imagine 1000! Wow, I am sorry!!! This makes me thankful I never even thought about donating to a milk bank (although I am sure they are useful sometimes - but your experience sounds just awful! Hugs!)

WOW that is amazing and great that you have been able to donate 4000 oz!!! I'm glad you did eventually find some appreciative families!

I'm really sorry you had a bad experience with the milk bank, but I'm relieved the milk bank screens and filters incoming milk, and I implore you with compelling reason not to blacklist them.

My daughter started out on Milk Share milk and ended up needing to switch to banked milk. Why? She has a rare chromosome disorder that's caused many medical complications. She has corn intolerance so she can't hold down any formulas or foods or meds with corn or derived from corn (almost all formulas have corn in it). Her genetic makeup makes her gains weight slowly (she is almost sixteen months old and weighs 15 pounds) so she must have guaranteed higher calorie milk. We get that--24-calorie milk (standard is anywhere from 13 to 30)--from the bank, and we have assurance the milk is wholly safe from pathogens which is vital to her.

(My daughter could not learn to eat because she had congestive heart failure early on, and because I nursed several children before her, my breasts would not respond to a pump. She gets her food through a g-tube into her stomach.)

She has kidney issues, has gotten numerous urinary tract infections that required hospitalization, and we recently learned her immune system is deficient in a major germ-fighting component. I can't stress how important it is that the milk bank screens milk like it does.

Milk Bank milk has saved her life and saved her from undergoing needless stomach-tying surgery, which one hospital tried to do, refusing to believe breast milk was good for her, pushing formulas that kept making her vomit and have failure to thrive. Once she got on breast milk, she began to gain weight and stop vomiting. It is still her primary food due to several GI complications.

Milk Bank milk is expensive largely because of the bottles and equipment costs plus expensive blood and milk tests they have to make for every donation (one batch of donated milk may be fine while the next may not, so not all of your milk may have gone to waste, Sarita). But I can tell you that at least one of the major milk banks in the United States (there are only six) is not meeting expenses. Their hospital covers their deficit and the director isn't paid for all of her time. When it comes to a needy baby whose family has little to no money, they place the baby's needs over payment. It doesn't surprise me they often don't reimburse the bags. They often can't, but I can tell you with surety that they'd love to. And they'd love to lower the prices of milk to the recipient families, who cover all the costs of processing. What they really need is a lot of funding they simply don't have.

Donating to milk banks isn't for everyone, but milk banks serve a very important purpose with a huge need that grass roots milk sharing programs simply can't fill.

I implore all you precious pumping moms not to reject milk banks and not to stop sending them your milk. My daughter's life is only one of many whose lives rely on weekly milk bank shipments.

BB, I can understand what you are saying and I don't think milk banks are all evil (your story is a good example of why they are good and necessary for special cases!) but it would be incredibly heartbreaking to hear that 1000 oz was dumped down the drain. That is a lot of unpaid time that this mother put into to give her milk, and it feels wasted. 1000 oz... It takes me a few minutes to get just 1 oz sometimes. I can't imagine how much time was put into getting the 1000 oz. I'd probably feel the same way if I was the OP!

I don't know. Donating to a milk bank is a nice thought but how often is it that milk is dumped down the drain? I don't know if I would donate or not. Before accepting that much milk from one person, perhaps they should have an early screening process that tests just some milk, like a pp said...

I am still not a milk bank fan unless you have a critically ill child that needs specific requirements met. I will promote milkshare in any other circumstance.

I've donated to the milk bank in Colorado with my last child with lots of success. They didn't reimburse me for any bags, but they did send out containers for the milk itself which I used. The only difficulty was convincing the hospital to draw my blood for testing for free, and I had to purchase some dry ice (about $7) on my own. That being said, I'm looking to donate both to MilkShare and a milkbank (MilkShare because I'd rather do it locally and to know one specific family is getting it and the milkbank because my milk will go straight towards a company fortifing human milk for preterm babies).