Donating

One thing I am passionate about is donating items that I don't have a use for anymore. I have never liked throwing things away for the heck of it and figure there is someone out there that could use these things, even if it's something small.

With all the pumping I've been doing at work, I have a lot of extra milk in our freezer. Maggie loves to nurse but I'm not sure she drinks as much from the bottle as she does when she is nursing.

Before I was pregnant, a friend of mine was considering donating her milk. I'm not sure if she followed through with it but it got me thinking that I could do that with my extra milk after I started noticing that we had milk taking up so much space in our freezer it was squeezing out room for other goodies.

We have a freestanding birth center in Sacramento that also operates a milk bank so I did the testing and filled out the application and now I'm a milk donor. I'm happy to say that I get to donate my milk to hospitals for NICU babies and also to a local woman that hasn't been able to provide enough milk for her baby.

When I had Maggie and was going to a moms group, there was a mom there that found out she had breast cancer right after birthing her son and she had to stop nursing him and go through treatment. She was very thankful to have hooked up with a U.S. milk bank and recieve milk in the mail for her son in his first year. Hearing her story has always stuck with me and now I am in a position to offer my milk to other people's babies that need it. It's a great feeling to know I am helping others in this way.

Not many people know that this is possible. If you know someone that isn't nursing and instead goes the formula route, mention this to them. Educate your family and friends. It's a pretty easy process on both ends (donor and reciever) and giving your baby mother's milk is much more nutritional than formula.

Just typing "milk bank" into Google brings up all sorts of websites. Milk banks help during worldwide disasters like the earthquake in Haiti. Salma Hayek was filmed nursing a newborn in Africa, which after reading this article, is called cross-nursing. Huh! It's a controversial issue here in the U.S. but I think it's a wonderful thing. I tend to follow beliefs featured here, which is a great magazine encouraging more natural ways of parenting from all aspects. I highly recommend it!