Giving Compass' Take:

• Melody Schreiber explains the importance of donating breastmilk and the complications that accompany the process. 

• How can philanthropists help to facilitate the process? What education is needed to help mothers understand their options? 

• Learn more about the importance of breastfeeding. 

When Ariyah Georges was born 15 weeks early, she weighed only one pound, 12 ounces. Her mother, Jovan, knew how important breastfeeding was, especially for micro-preemies like Ariyah, so she began pumping milk to feed her through a tube. But two days later, Jovan felt dizzy and feverish — 104 degrees, in fact. She had a blood infection and was close to full septic shock.

She entered quarantine for nearly two weeks at the regional Northern Virginia hospital where she’d delivered. During that time, she could still pump breast milk, but Ariyah couldn’t consume it because of the risk of developing sepsis herself. Without it, the newborn was particularly vulnerable to a disease called necrotizing enterocolitis, the number-one cause of death among premature infants in the United States.

Enter donor milk — breast milk purchased by hospitals for mothers who aren’t able to produce enough milk on their own, due to health complications, stress, or other factors. The milk comes from milk banks, organizations that collect, screen, and pasteurize breast milk from lactating women willing to donate.

As demand for donor milk rises, banks must find more charitable donors—a task made more complicated by informal, unregulated networks of milk sharing that happens online. And many of the most vulnerable infants are still not being reached.

For me, coordinating milk drop-off in the city was enough of a hassle and expense that I soon tried a different route: I found a local mother of a NICU baby to donate to on my own. I met the NICU mom online, through a Facebook group set up to facilitate informal sharing. Every few weeks, she drove to my house and picked up dozens of bags of frozen milk, which helped ease my workload as a donor.

Read the full article about women donating breast milk by Melody Schreiber at The Atlantic.