to not feed my ds someone else's breast milk.

[PotatoLetters]

Ds is mixed fed. Yesterday my friend offered to defrost some of her bm if I ran out of formula. Aibu to not want to feed him this?

Ps I know it was well intended. Not bitching about her offering, just questioning my response.

This thread has gone a bit mad. In order to produce the BM the other mother is actually bf herself. That means she is risking her own child with this HIV she caught post partum and all the drugs she is taking too.

Yanbu....

There is no way I'd consider that.

Piper, I would trust formula to be disease free in the same way that I would trust any other food or drink prepared in highly hygienic facilities and undergoing infection control screening to be safe. I've just eaten a ready meal from sainsburys for lunch and am relatively confident I'm not going to contract any diseases from it.

Over 30,000 adult heterosexual women in the uk have hiv, of which only 648 are iv drug users (2011 stats). Of course, most breastfeeding women in the uk don't have hiv or hep b or hep c or any other transmissible illness. In the same way that most people your child wants to have sex with when they're a young adult won't have hiv or hep b or hep c, but you will still tell them to wear a condom in a new relationship because it's better to be safe and you just can't tell these things by looking at people.

The risks are small but they are there.

I wouldn't want to be fed a friends body fluid....screened or unscreened and certainly wouldn't want to give it to my dc.

Sally, would you trust the formula to be pathogen free enough to ignore the manufacturers instructions on preparing a feed?

"Just some of the comments in the thread that could, potentially, be perceived as anti-FF"

Well, they could be- if the reader was paranoid..........

No, why would I do that? I didn't leave my ready meal sat on the radiator overnight either or cook it for less time than it says on the box, and I wouldn't leave expressed breast milk out of the fridge for hours.

Bacteria in formula - why it's important to follow the instructions

Quite apart from pathogens, the instructions on formula tell you how to make it up to the right concentrations, if too highly concentrated it can lead to high sodium which can be dangerous.
Being aware of the risk of transmission of illness from breastmilk doesn't mean I'm completely ignorant of all other risks.

Sally - 50% of mums don't follow the instructions on making up feeds because it's a faff.

As I said - some risks seem more acceptable than others.

Yet children can be made very ill or even die from incorrectly prepared formula. I would consider it risk not to follow the instructions correctly.

Non of my children have ever had any formula, I have breastfed them long into childhood. If I for some reason couldn't breastfeed them then I would much rather give them formula than donated breastmilk.

I don't feel comfortable with the risk of infection, however much I trust the woman I also have to trust their sexual partner.

I don't think that there are many benefits to breastfeeding, breastmilk isn't that important, certainly not important enough to risk potentially exposing my child to serious diseases.

It's important to make up and store formula correctly as there's a risk of bacterial growth otherwise. It's important to cook and store chicken correctly as there's a risk of bacterial growth. a tub of formula sitting in your kitchen isn't sterile, particularly once it's bern opened, so it must be made up correctly to make sure it's safe.
That doesn't negate the fact that transmissible viruses are transmitted in breastmilk, or the fact that you cant know for certain what someone's hiv or hepatitis status is.

Surely if he's mix fed you give him your milk if you run out.

You can reduce every risk possible by safely making up a ff. You can oversee this yourself.

Feeding unscreened BM not so.

Minifingers, lots of parents do things that put their children at risk because they aren't aware of the risks. How many people have blind cords in reach of their children? Have checked that none of their kids toys have accessible button batteries? The key here is education and raising awareness, not judgement of parents for not bothering or derision of formula for being dangerous and bad

But many people choose not to make it up correctly Only. So they are prepared to take the risk with that but they wouldn't take the risk of unscreened bm. Why is one risk ok but not the other?

I must have missed all the posts saying 'I wouldn't give my child unscreened breast milk, I'd rather give them incorrectly made up formula.'
I personally don't think either risk is ok.

Some people think that the risk of giving unscreened breast milk is ok, some don't.

Some people think that the risk of not making up formula as per the instructions is ok, some don't.

You can't extrapolate from those facts that the people who wouldn't give their baby unscreened breast milk are the same people that WOULD give their baby incorrectly made up formula.

I'm not speaking on behalf of these 'many people' who don't follow guidelines when preparing or storing formula....

Just on behalf of myself and how I would feel about any unscreened 'friends' or anyone else's body product feeding my DC.

I wouldn't choose to have any unscreened blood or unscreened blood products and prefer to negate these risks.

That's like saying 50% of people in a room are male and 50% don't like bananas therefore none of the men like bananas. Bad science.

I have no double that formula is sterile and disease free.

Formula is only sterile at the point of opening the package. From then on it is exposed to the bacteria in the air, the spoon, etc.

And pasteurization does not completely sterilize, btw. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization

Personally, I'd be more worried that the milk had been frozen. You don't know if it has been defrosted at any point, how long it took to freeze and how quickly it was frozen after being produced, if the pump had been properly cleaned, and so on.

I wouldn't do it. It's icky.

Lweji, the same can be said for any food product. Including expressed breast milk. That's why formula comes with instructions on how to make it up, there is guidance on how to properly cook and store food and guidance on how long to store expressed milk in the fridge and out of the fridge
Formula should be made up as per the guidelines. You shouldn't lick raw chicken. You should keep button batteries out of the reach of children. Just because some people choose not to do those things doesn't make formula, chicken or button batteries inherently bad.