My Breastmilk Donor Journey

What if I dry up?

What if I decide to quit earlier than I thought and I need this milk?

All of the what-ifs were trying to convince me I needed to hold on to this stash of breastmilk forever. But then I heard a whisper: “The Lord will provide” (Genesis 22:14). 

And He has provided–I mean look at this! (I actually bought the freezer for the milk. This baby is expensive, let me tell you. Although the formula would add up to more than the freezer, right?)

I was an exclusive pumper with my first two kids (seven months with my first and only four months with my second), and I could not for the life of me make nursing work. So I pumped. Now, with baby number three, he will nurse but I still am obsessed with pumping. He’ll finish feeding and I’m all, Did he drain me? I still think there’s more in there. Enter more pumping, and as a result, an oversupply of milk. 

So I prayerfully decided to become a milk donor and trust that if God has provided my baby with more than enough milk, it’s for a reason.

It’s so I can in turn bless another mama whose baby needs this milk.

So I packed up my cooler of milk and prayed over it: “Lord, please let this milk nourish and strengthen the little baby that it finds. I pray this baby will grow strong because of this milk, and they will be released from the NICU soon and heading home with mama. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.”

It’s National Breastfeeding Month so I decided to do a post about what it entails to become a milk donor. Maybe you’re a mom who is leery of using it, or maybe you’re a mom who has more milk than you know what to do with and you’ve never considered donating it.  I’ll be honest, I used donor milk with my first baby who was a late preterm baby, and the idea of it at first kind of grossed me out. You wanna put something in my baby’s mouth that came out of someone else’s body? Yuck. However, having gone through it now, and knowing how thorough and intense it is, I fully support it!

So here’s what I had to do to become a milk donor:

• I had an initial phone interview to go through my health history and even my husband’s history. (No, I have not been exposed to mad cow disease, but right now I feel like a cow with all this milk!) All medications that I have been on since giving birth were evaluated, and I was even asked how I clean/sanitize my pump parts.

• I had blood work done to check for all the diseases that could pass through my milk such as HIV or hepatitis. I will have those labs done again every three months for as long as I’m donating. The milk bank fully paid for this and all I had to do was show up and get poked.

• My first donation was tested for bacteria before being pasteurized. I needed to pass that before they’d accept any more milk from me.

• I live about an hour and a half from the closest milk bank, so my milk is overnighted to them. The milk bank sends me a cooler with the shipping label, so all I have to do is pack it, put some ice packs around it, and drop it off at UPS. Easy peasy.

And that’s it! My job is basically to just keep pumping (and I hear Dory from Finding Nemo singing, “Just keep pumping, just keep pumping.”) Will I someday wean my little one and want some milk to keep him going? Yeah, sure. Is it the end of the world if I have to do formula instead? Absolutely not, especially if I know I was able to provide for a baby whose tummy cannot tolerate formula due to their size. 

I realize all moms cannot breastfeed, I get it. It. Is. Hard. It’s supposed to be natural but sometimes that’s not always the case. I would know after my exclusive pumping journey. So this post is not meant to shame anyone who was not able to or did not want to nurse (with working and juggling all the things, it’s a commitment!). 

But my prayer is that if you ever find yourself in a position where you may need donor milk–you know that the mama who has donated it, did it with love. And if you find yourself an oversupplier, maybe consider the process and just look into it because us moms need to help each other out. 

Even if we’ve never met her and she’s a stranger sitting in some NICU.