breastfeeding
breastfeeding benefits | breastfeeding older children | donating breast milk to others | wet nursing | help and info
donating breast milk to others
Although a formal system of wet nursing does not exist in the UK, human breast milk is collected, stored, screened, processed and distributed through a milk banking system.
Milk banks collect breast milk from healthy mothers who volunteer their milk (usually while nursing their own children), who have enough to spare. The mothers are screened prior to acceptance and the milk tested and heat treated before being supplied to sick and premature babies in neonatal intensive care units.
Often a woman who delivers prematurely is not physiologically ready to produce sufficient milk for her baby. In other cases she may be unwell or the stress of having a baby in neonatal care may interfere with her milk supply. Nonetheless, her baby would still benefit from breast milk over formula.
Scientists from Oxford University recently found that premature babies who received only breast-milk are less likely to develop necrotising enterocolitis (a life-threatening bowel disorder) than babies fed formula milk.
There are currently around 1,000 milk donors in the UK, serving 17 milk banks. Milk banks are funded by individual hospital trusts or charities. As a result not all hospitals are able to offer this service.
The milk bank service does not supply milk to mothers at home.
Read on for details of relevant organisations, websites and reading.
