The milk bank’s walk-in freezer at B.C. Women’s Hospital and Health Centre in Vancouver usually receives about 1,000 ounces of donated breast milk each day, pasteurizing and freezing it for premature and critically ill babies at neonatal intensive care units throughout the province.
But this week, supplies dipped as low as 500 ounces, rising to 2,000 ounces on hand as of Wednesday afternoon, milk bank co-ordinator Frances Jones said.
The milk goes to “the most tiny and fragile infants,” Jones said. “The majority of them are premature, but there’s also full-term infants who have various problems, like cardiac issues or kidney failures, or all the range of human conditions that can go awry.”
In 2014, the bank supplied milk to more than 3,000 such babies, and this year’s number of recipients will be higher. Their own mothers are often kept apart from their babies during treatment and can be too stressed to meet the babies’ feeding needs, Jones said.
“We try and bridge that gap with pasteurized donor milk,” she said.
The milk bank had about 250 donors in 2014 — new mothers with babies of their own and, sadly, some bereaved women who had lost their own babies.
“They donate their milk in honour of their babies, which is very touching,” Jones said of that latter group. “They help another mother when they do not have a baby to hold.”
A greater number of women donated this year, but Jones said the bank is falling short. Human breast milk provides babies with antibodies to fight disease and infection.
Donor mothers go through a screening process similar to that for blood donors. Find information on how to donate on the website bcwomensmilkbank.ca.
