| Spare a drop?
Babies in special care units need breast milk to thrive. Alison Sparkes on supplying your surplus to a breast milk bank Any new mum who’s just gone back to work will recognise the deep felt need to get back to her infant the minute her working day is over. With me, the need wasn’t just emotional. Charging up to my front door at 3.45pm, having not seen or fed my baby since 7.15am, I would be inwardly praying that the childminder hadn’t just given him a bottle. ‘Please, please, please let him be hungry’ I would whimper, as my nursing bra creaked under the strain. And the release when he latched on! It was like getting the bomb squad in to diffuse me. Having plenty of milk to spare can be a bit of a pain – literally – but it can be put to very good use. Jacob at this stage was on a mixture of formula and breast milk, as I couldn’t be sure of expressing enough to see him through each day, so by midday there was a fair bit of ‘Gold Top’ going begging. That’s when I found out about the local milk bank, quite by chance in the local paper, and joined the herd – sorry – team. Initially though – I did feel a bit like one of the herd. At that time, my local milk bank at Southampton’s Princess Anne Maternity Unit was using electric pumps, which you had to plug in. You put the funnel thingy in place, held your breath, and switched on the mains supply. And there you sat, humming and slurping loudly, for however long it took to fill a small bottle. My husband wouldn’t let me do it while we watched Neighbours. He was somehow put off the daily dramas of Australian teenagers by the sound of his missus lactating down a plastic tube at 150 decibels. Happily, by the time I started donating with baby number two, the unit was offering a new style hand pump which was far more effective than either the old electric gear or the hand-held battery jobs – and silent. I could even use it in the rest room at work. Once a fortnight my yield was collected at the door, in exchange for more sterilised bottles. I pulled the frozen filled ones from among the fish fingers and frozen peas and passed them over. It was the most nutritionally precious thing in my kitchen. And I was thrilled to give it.
The milk bank idea 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 13 across the UK, still supplying to special care baby units and still saving tiny lives. Many new mums are completely unaware of the service, but others are put off by HIV screening, compulsory since health scares in the 80s. ‘We go through phases when we’re running extremely low, and it’s really hard when we have to turn down requests from other hospitals,’ says Carolyn Westcott, infant Feeding Advisor at the Princess Anne, who only has about 20 donors currently on her list. ‘It’s such precious stuff – it’s regarded as medicine rather than food on the neonatal units. A tiny baby’s gut is much better able to digest human milk than formula, and so get the nutrients it needs to grow and recover. ‘What I find really hard to accept is that there are only 13 milk banks in the UK – and if your premature baby happens to be born in Cornwall, its chances of survival aren’t as good as somewhere further up country with a milk bank within reach. No baby should be denied this medicine.’ Katherine Matthews from Salisbury knows exactly what she means. Her baby daughter Hannah was born nine weeks premature and depended on the pasteurised human milk she was fed. ‘I was expressing some milk for her, but it took a while for me to get going, and she needed it straight away. She was born at 31 weeks, weighing 3lb 1oz and unable to suck, so she was fed through a tube. ‘She had 10mls (two teaspoons) every hour. I was very happy that she was receiving it. She’s put weight on really quickly, and even though she’s now on formula, because I had problems with mastitis, I know she had the best start.’ If you think you may be able to donate, or know someone who might, get in touch with the United Kingdom Association For Milk Banking on 0208 383 3559.
Milk banks in the UK can be found at: |