Breastmilk Donation
Read an ivillage.co.uk Article here
See the UK Association of Milkbanks website here
This page is under construction - please get in touch if you would like to contribute an article or a few lines.
Breastmilk has been 'banked' for nearly a hundred years. Since the first milk bank opened in Vienna in 1909, the story of milk banking has crossed continents and seen fluctuations in its popularity.
The milk bank idea in the UK was born with a set of quads at St Neot's in Cambridgeshire in 1935. The matron at Queen Charlotte's, seeing how weak the babies were, organised an ad hoc collection of milk from other new mums, and got it flown to St Neot's twice daily, where it almost certainly helped the quads to survive.
This success led, in 1939, to the opening of the first milk bank in the country at Queen Charlotte's. Now there are 17 across the UK, supplying to special care baby units and still saving tiny lives.
'Milk Banking' is the collection, storage, screening, processing and distribution of donated breastmilk. The uses of donor breastmilk vary but in general most recipients have been born prematurely, and are often small for their gestational age, with post-gut surgery babies also considered to be high priority cases.
Many new mums are completely unaware of the service, but others are put off by HIV screening, compulsory since health scares in the 80s.
All women who have decided to breastfeed will know breastmilk is the ideal food for babies, but it is especially important for babies who are sick or premature: giving these babies breastmilk increases their chances of survival and helps their long-term development. Sometimes even full term babies need to receive donated milk at first because their mothers cannot feed them because they are sick or under too much stress to produce enough milk.
What is difficult currently is that there are so few milk banks in the UK – and if your premature baby happens to be born in the Lakes for example, its chances of survival aren't as good as somewhere further into the Midlands with a milk bank within reach. No baby should be denied this essential good start in life
Donors are asked to express their milk. The amount of milk collected from each donor varies from woman to woman and from week to week. Most useful is a regular supply of small amounts although some milk banks also take larger one-off donations. Every drop of milk is valuable and small or sick babies benefit from even the smallest quantities of breastmilk. Premature babies will often start with less than 20mls per day. One ounce of milk will feed a tiny premature baby for 1 ½ days.
What are the guidelines for donating?
Guidelines published by the United Kingdom Association for Milk Banking recommend that breastmilk donors should be healthy non-smokers, not using drugs or taking regular medication - although donors can take the progesterone only contraceptive pill and use asthma inhalers, if necessary. They should drink only occasional small amounts of alcohol and have a low daily caffeine intake. Donations must stop if the woman develops mastitis or rubella or recently had a rubella vaccination.
The first donation must be within six months of starting breastfeeding, and the last within 12 months.
Prior to acceptance, donors are screened via bloodtest for a number of infections that may be passed on via breastmilk. These include HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and a rare condition called HTLV. It is also recommended that follow up blood tests are performed three months after stopping donating. In addition all donations of breastmilk are screened for bacteria and are not used if there are too many bacteria or any harmful ones and all donated breastmilk in the UK is heat treated. This is because although a mother's milk is ideal for her own baby, extra care needs to be taken with tiny or sick babies.
Donors are not paid for their milk as milk banks want to be sure that the motivation for donating the milk is to help sick and premature infants. If payments were to be offered this would introduce an element of doubt about the motivation. In practice donors usually agree that they would not want to be paid for their milk - that in fact they prefer to give freely of what has been termed "the milk of human kindness."
Most milk banks collect the milk. How often they do this will depend on how urgently they need the milk and how much donors are able to store at home.
About the United Kingdom Association of Milk Banking:
the UKAMB is a charity founded to promote human milk banking. It is funded largely by members, with membership available for both professionals working within milk banking or allied fields and for non professionals who support their aims. They produce up to date evidence based guidelines to help Trusts and hospitals set up milk banks and to ensure best practise. They exhibit at conferences attended by professionals working within maternity and neonatal services. One of the most important roles of UKAMB has been to provide information and answer the many questions that are asked either specifically about donor milk or about the collection, storage and handling of a mother's own expressed breastmilk. They also run conferences, produce newsletters and hold meetings all of which share and disseminate information about milk banking. Their aim is to ensure everyone working in this small field is able to benefit from a collective experience and knowledge and also learn from the larger and more established worlds of blood and tissue banking.
The UKAMB is unable to accept donations linked to the sales of products. However if you would like to support the UKAMB you can do so through the website at www.ukamb.org