Liquid Gold

It's World (Breast) Milk Sharing Week again. In honor, I'm reposting my experience with milk sharing, a post that was picked up by The World Milk Sharing Organization's ebook available at:



worldmilksharing.net

Like giving blood, sharing breast milk is a beautiful, communal practice - a coming together to give infants their best start. If you're interested in giving or obtaining shared milk, your local Eats on Feets Facebook page is a good resource.

Please Pass the Milk

In honor of World Milksharing Week



My story is part of the Blog carnival organised by World Milksharing Week, to celebrate World Milksharing Week 2013. Click here to read more stories about milksharing. If you’d like to participate too, please visit this page.












I need a deep freezer and a lot of glass storage containers.

Actually, “a lot” may be an understatement; I need a Smucker’s factory of glass jars.

The life of stored breast milk can be safely extended with the use of glass receptacles and deep freezer storage. So, in my endeavor to store up donated breast milk for my unborn child, I start collecting glass containers. I buy mason jars by the case and put out a call to everyone I know to start saving them for me. Dozens of empty pickle, jelly, spaghetti, and all manner of food product-jars begin to manifest.

I run my collection through the dishwasher and then stand over the stove, dropping each one into a huge steel pot of boiling water. Each gets a 10 minute bath to complete the sanitation process. I'm pretty sure my baby, tucked in-utero underneath my tong-clad-hands, grows accustomed to this soundtrack of my pregnancy: the rolling boil that clanks the glass against the metal.

I order a deep freezer, and I divvy out the collected, sanitized jars to my small army of girlfriends who are ready to pump for my daughter.

After having undergone a bilateral mastectomy last year, I no longer possess milk ducts. Breastfeeding is not an option for me.

I’m coming off a harried path of altered plans and broken hearts, of the coping and improvisation of a cancer diagnosis and treatment. I will accept my friends’ milk with open arms and a grateful heart. And when those stores of cloudy, yellowish-white life force dwindle under the demands of my daughter’s voracious little appetite, I will branch into the world of public milk sharing.

In the end, other women’s breast milk will sustain my daughter for the first 9 months of her life:

17 different women. 4 counties. 89 days straight before formula was introduced. Some 270 days with breast milk in her diet – of which I did not provide a drop.

Ideally, of course I would never have chosen to do it this way. And frankly, it sounds a little scary in retrospect. But, like so many choices in life, it was not plucked from the ideal; this was a path born of improvisation.

And also so often like life, the process of managing the imperfect became itself beautiful.

Hungry to fill my daughter’s belly with the best odds I could, I drove across the southern part of the state collecting milk for her - and along the way got to witness the self-sacrificing love of friends and the goodwill and generosity of strangers. I found women on milk sharing forums, met them and talked with them, came home with bags of their milk, which I flash-heated and happily fed to my healthy infant, with her peditricians' blessing (and praise.)

So today, here is my great praise and deep gratitude to those women, to the women willing to give their time, efforts, and precious milk for the benefit of others. Here is to improvisation, to making the best out of what we’re given.

Here’s to milk sharing.

 

 

Donor Breast Milk

Other women’s breast milk sustained my daughter for the first 9 months of her life.

 

17 different women. 4 counties. 89 days straight before formula was introduced. Some 270 days with breast milk in her diet – of which I did not provide a drop.

I would never have chosen to do it this way. And frankly, it sounds a little scary in retrospect. But, as some choices in life are not plucked from the ideal, this was a path born of improvisation.

It had been roughly 2 years since I woke up to crippling joint pain and roughly 1.5 years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer; maneuvering the world with idealism has escaped me. One can only choose from the options available, and my choice here was to feed my baby formula or donor breast milk.

With a newly-blossomed concern against all things unnatural, a decision to use a processed “formula” derived of either cow casein or soy proteins to sustain my infant, who may be genetically predisposed to high risks of cancer, was one I was looking to avoid. I was determined to provide breast milk exclusively for at least her first 3 months.

From Day 1, this was a challenge.

The hospital, afraid of liability issues, asked me not to bring the donor milk in to my newborn. In spite of our Pediatrician’s order to allow such, we were visited repeatedly by uncomfortable administrators and, ultimately, we left the recovery ward early to feed her at home in peace.

By month 2, I had run through the entire, vast supply lovingly pumped by my best friends. It had been difficult for me to judge how long the milk stored up in my deep freezer would sustain her. Before her birth, I would lift the lid and gaze upon the frozen white treasure filling jars in every size and shape, and I mistakenly estimated we would be set for the first 4 or 5 months.

Running low on the milk from my friends, who I know intimately, I started to research public milk sharing. I read up on the risks of such and the ways to minimize them.

A friend of a friend offered her excess milk. I accepted.

I flash-heated the milk and developed a method of quickly cooling it back down to a safe temperature. (This home pasteurization helps inactivate pathogens while still maintaining the majority of the nutritional value.) 

And then I began to develop a relationship with mothers I don’t know, via online milk sharing forums and my local La Leche League. I drove around the southern part of the state, hungry to fill my daughter’s belly with the best odds I can.

From the very moment my infant was cut from her umbilical cord and craved colostrum, I had nothing to give her. A mastectomy completely removes milk ducts. (Mothers with supply issues and adoptive parents are also in the market for donated milk.) Yes, there are some risks. And like anything remotely-controversial, there are many people who disagree with such efforts.

But I feel have made the healthiest decision I could for my daughter, in difficult circumstances. Commend or condemn as you will, I am proud of this story. That my friends loved me, and her, enough… that good-intentioned strangers (who became friends) would take the time and effort to help us… that I could live my devotion to my child by driving, researching, boiling, and bottling milk… yes, I am proud.

 

 

Stores of Love

We need deep freezers and we need a lot of glass storage containers.

Actually, “a lot” may be an understatement; we need a Smucker’s factory of glass jars. The life of breast milk can be safely extended with the use of glass receptacles and deep freezer storage.

So, in my endeavor to store up donated breast milk for my unborn child, I start collecting glass containers. I buy mason jars by the case and put out a call to everyone I know to start saving their glass jars. My relatives put collection boxes out at their workplaces. Dozens of empty pickle, jelly, spaghetti, and all manner of food product-jars manifest.

I run each one through the dishwasher and then give it a 10-minute bath in boiling water. I stand over the stove, boiling huge steel pots of water and jars. The sound of the glass clanking against the rolling boil is the soundtrack of my pregnancy. Surely the baby, tucked in-utero underneath my tong-clad-hands, grows accustomed to the popping of the hot water and the clanking glass.

I divvy out the collected, sanitized jars and order my deep freezer in anticipation of the incoming stores.

The sales representative, processing my payment for this very special small appliance, makes small talk by asking, "So what are you getting the freezer for?" Funny that you should ask.

I decide that storing other people's breast milk for my unborn child is in fact not a bizarre and creepy answer and tell her my story: I have generous and loving friends who are helping my daughter get a healthy start in a way that I cannot.

My friends take the jars that dozens of people saved for me, I happily stood over a boiling pot sanitizing, and they fill them with their precious time and good intentions for my daughter. (Meanwhile, of course, they fill my heart with gratitude.)

There is a loud shriek on the line followed by some sort of gaspy giggle. The stranger running my credit card screams into the phone, "That is the neatest thing I have EVER heard!" She gushes on, "What amazing friends you have." Yes, I agree.

And now I also have an arsenal of jars distributed amongst every lactating one of them and a deep freezer that, over the next year, will be filled and refilled repeatedly with a cloudy yellowish-white life force. For her, for my daughter.

Milk Sharing

It’s a pretty niche market. Chances are you haven’t heard of it.

Unless you have had a great abundance or a critical lack, you’re probably not privy to the milk sharing community - breast milk, that is.

Giving birth to a child from a body completely absent of milk ducts (thank you bilateral mastectomy) is a new experience for me, one that has created the dilemma of how I will sustain and nourish this new life.

I do not want my daughter to be any more disadvantaged than my cancer has already made us. I want her to reap some of the great many benefits of breast milk; I want her to be free of the potentially harmful side effects of formula. ...And so begins my jaunt into the community of milk sharing mamas.

I start by researching breast milk banks, the only thing I've heard of at this point. But I learn that most milk banks cater to infants in the NICU, not people like me.

With providential timing my dear friend calls: “I have a really weird question and you don’t have to answer right away. I’ve been thinking about it a lot though,” she begins. “Would you want me to pump milk for your daughter? ...Is that too weird?”

Wow! Amazing! I don’t find it weird.

Okay, maybe it's a little weird. But the kindness, the benevolence, the benefit outshine the oddity. 

Within weeks, one friend becomes two, then three, then six, as word of my need spreads.

I research milk sharing risks and how to minimize them, how to store milk and for how long, how to thaw and prepare the frozen milk.     


When I realize how quickly entire freezers of stored milk will dwindle under the demands of a new and voracious little appetite, I will eventually branch out into the world of milk sharing amongst strangers. I will arrive there gingerly, over time, and with much research.

For now, I am reveling in the blessing that a community of girlfriends can be. I know who the milk is coming from; I know each mama intimately. And I know what amazing friends I have to give my daughter such a precious gift - a gift I cannot provide her myself.