to wonder why my breast milk is good enough for my baby but not for anyone else's?

[entropygirl]

I wanted to donate breast milk but found out I would be disqualified due to having a blood transfusion after labour. Noone ever suggested to me that I should not breast feed because of the transfusion, so it seems my milk is safe for my baby but not safe for anyone else's baby. This seems outrageous to me! If breast milk is such an asset, particularly for prem babies, then why disqualify people based on the stupidly tiny chance of blood transfusion generated vCJD when there is not even any evidence the disease can be transmitted through milk?

My understanding is that we cannot test for CJD - you need a brain biopsy for that which clearly will never become a routine screening test, for obvious reasons.
Also I think that the period from exposure to becoming ill can be decades long in CJD which makes it very hard to pin down when exposure happened.
Prions are just plain weird .

But the idea that there's no need to tell women about the risk as they will have certainly passed it on only works if that is the case. Is that the case?

I donated milk inspite of having anti -D in pregancy. I had to give up donating milk when I was prescribed anti depressants. I chose to continue bf while on medication.

I chose to continue bf while on medication as I felt the risks of formula were greater than the risk of breastfeeding while taking anti depressants. However this was a personal decision. Some mothers feel happier to bottlefeed.

From what I remember breastmilk is pooled together so that it can be pasturized in a big machine. A baby in nicu may well be getting milk from more than one mother in one feed.

The plot thickens even further

So if you've had anti-D you can donate milk. Or maybe you can't. And either way no-one's going to mention anything about vCJD to you before you BF your baby.

Logic on all of this!

Oooh what about this one.

I donated my cord blood with both children.

I may have had a blood transfusion when I was a child (not sure).

So.... What about that then, eh?!

AND I had anti-D.

sardinequeen it is most likely that you can't warn women about the risk of vCJD in breast milk post transfusion because there is no known risk. There is no known case (as far as I know) of transplacental transmission either.

But that is totally illogical.

The difficulty I have with this policy is that women who are BF their babies will get really scared when they try to donate milk that they may have passed something to their baby, something that is fatal.

Women will wonder (as per the OP) why it is good enough for their babies but not good enough for anyone elses.

It simply doesn't make any sense.

Well this was fun and interesting...but there are a lot of silly people who think 1) that prem babies are more susceptible to vCJD than full term babies which is rubbish. In fact its a better bet giving higher risk milk to prem babies than full term because the benefits are worth more to them and the dangers are the same.
2) that not having a transfusion means you have no risk of vCJD (in fact at best your risk is half mine and in reality they are almost identical given that there have been only 4 cases of infection in 13 years and tens of millions of units of blood transfused. Think 1 in 200,000 plays 1 in 100,000 or more likely 1 in 200,000 plays 1 in 150,000.)

.....and lots of smart people who think

1. that the milk mixing the banks do means that you can infect a lot of babies in one go (if you have vCJD which you don't, see 2) above, and if it can transfer through milk, which it doesn't appear to)
2. that the guidelines are a load of tosh and preventing seriously awesome breast milk getting to very needy babies.

I also discovered the HM4HB gang where intelligent people get to make their own minds up about the tiny to non-existent risk of vCJD versus the very real benefit of breast milk, so happy donating!

I take medication which means that I don't think I would be able to donate breastmilk but totally fine for me to breastfeed my own.

The way that I see it is like this:

a) the best thing for my DC was their mother's milk. If I didn't breastfed they'd have had formula.

b) For other babies would be best for them to have breastmilk from someone who was medication free. They don't NEED to have MY breastmilk!

I don't have an issue with this.

I think if anything the risks of the transfusion should have been explained beforehand - presumably it saved your life?