Hello Fellow Mommy Bloggers!

I have recently blogged about a topic near and dear to my heart: breastmilk donation. I have been researching breast milk donation for several months now, and have discovered a lot of very interesting things about milk banks and milk banking that probably not many people are aware of. I compiled a lot of my research in my latest post, which I hope you... :)

If you don't have time to read it, I will summarize it for you here.

There are three ways a mom can donate her excess frozen breast milk here in the United States:

1. donate through informal milk donation, mother-to-mother (MilkShare)
2. donate to a HMBANA milk bank (a milk banking system that provides pasteurized milk to needy babies in hospital NICUs, whether or not the family can pay the $3.50/ounce for it)
3. donate to Prolacta, a for-profit human milk banking company, through a network of so-called milk "banks" that take the donated breast milk but don't distribute it to needy babies. Prolacta processes the donated breast milk collected at these milk "banks" (actually, milk depots) into human milk fortifier that is sold for $184.83/ounce to hospitals. If a family can't find a way to pay for the HMF, the baby doesn't get it.
   
   

It's free to donate to all of them, but the price for the recipient varies considerably from option 1 to option 3. I hope you come read the whole post to inform yourself about milk banking. Hope to see you there, and feel free to leave comments. :)