Would you sell breast milk?

[Flum]

Considering the recent threads and it seems to be agreed that breast milk might be slightly better for babies.

Would you sell your breast milk?

Bottle feeding mums, would you buy it?

Actually, some ideas spring to mind, but since they involve getting up close and personal with a herd of cows, I don't think I'll volunteer!

oh no, i'd rather trust in an anonymous cow who is probably pumped full of antibiotics fed on an unspecified cattle feed prone to foot and mouth disease and BSE.

what i mean is that you don't know anything at all about the health of the cow that your cow and gate is made from yet you trust it. why? how is that any different from not knowing the human the milk has come from? You can bet there would be way more screening as is done for a hospital milk bank than is done on cow's milk.

Well, they give donated breastmilk to special care babies in some hospitals and I'm already thinking about donating to such a scheme after I have my next baby. It would just be such a nice thing to do - but I can't imagine wanting to get money for it. It's like donating blood - I would do it because I would feel good about giving it.

I would like to see more milk banks set up for mums who are unable for whatever reason to breatfeed to be able to access. They would of course need to be regulated through the hospital or some other reputable organisation.

If circumstances allowed it I would consider donating/selling my excess milk in this way. I would have like to have donated but found out too late.

It would have been fantastic to have been able to access donated milk in the early days when I had to give some formula.

I trust a human being more than I trust a cow.

Cow's milk does vary with the cow, and with the feed, as our milk does. But your pint of milk at home contains the milk of many cows, mixed together, to make it consistent.

A similar technique with human milk would be very unwise. I know not many diseases can be transmitted in milk, but some can. And somebody out there, someday, will have a new Big Scary Disease that can be transmitted in milk. They might give the disease to their kids, normally, but with this sort of system, they would give the disease to hundreds or thousands of babies, easily. (Yes, you could pasteurise the milk, to help prevent this sort of thing, but some infectious particles are pretty sturdy, like prions.)

We don't have the same concern with cow's milk because it's hard for diseases to jump from one species to another.

Lockets thats strange. My friend has two babies in neonatal unit as we speak. They were fed donated milk until her milk came in, then afterwards any excess milk she produced over and above what the babies needed was donated.

There was never any question of the babies getting anything other than breastmilk - only whether it came from her or was donated.

There is a significant increase in digestion problems if prem babies are formula fed, which is why the milk banks are so important.

I wouldn't fancy it one little bit. But that's just me.

I was going to donate milk, but in the end didn't have enough for DS and donations when I went back to work. Breastfeeding took quite a while to establish too, so by the time I got my act together there was quite a tight window in which to get DS used to a bottle and sort out the tests needed for donating. I feel sad I couldn't and will try harder should I have another baby.

But the tests and lifestyle questions were pretty thorough. You had a blood test before donating, which included an HIV test (and can put that it was for the purpose of donating breastmilk on any insurance form - they can't hold it against you for this reason). If I had a baby in SCBU, I'd want them fed breastmilk not formula.

Lockets - may have changed - sounds likely TBH. As you know St Geroges is one of the best neonatal units in the country so would imagine that they are at the forefront of best practice IYKWIM.

My friends babes are in Chelsea and Westminster hospital.

"We don't have the same concern with cow's milk because it's hard for diseases to jump from one species to another"

how about BSE/CJD?

I wouldn't sell it, but I might consider donating it to a milk bank next time.

abbysmum: Of course, some diseases jump species. BSE/CJD does, but it's quite hard to transmit, you have to eat cow spine, pretty much, and then you don't necessarily get CJD. I know that you can get cowpox from contact with cows (but I don't think that, having caught cowpox, you can give it to other people, so it's not that big a problem). Do we catch foot and mouth or whatever it's called directly from cows?

But compared to the number of diseases that humans can give each other, the number that come from cows is pretty low.

I have just guiltily chucked away some VERY old packets of frozen breast milk in my freezer (we're talking a year or so here). I should have donated some as I went along, but was too busy stockpiling for my daughter!

tried to donate dd2's cord blood, but my hospital doesn't do it

would definitely donate bm if had another child, especially as it's only used for prem babies who need it most

MI, I only remembered once dd2 was 6mths+, and they only take it up to 6 mths iirc

Recently went to a talk on setting up a milk bank and it was fascinating. This one was in Chester and was set up by the midwives (what a fantastic group of people) entirely from donations (money and milk) as the Trust weren't that interested and they seemed to want to shame them into it. Quite a lot of the milk (up to 30% I think) eventually is thrown away unfortunately because after being pasteurised, the levels of bacteria are still too high.

I would like to know what the position is on women whose babies are very ill/small. If they choose not to breastfeed would/should the baby get breastmilk donated from another source assuming the mother was willing?

Interestingly, the view on HIV positive women seems to be changing. They used to be advised to bottlefeed, but there now appears to be evidence that formula can in fact damage the delicate stomach lining of a baby and make it more permeable to infection (see ABM discussions for further details.)

I think the issue of milk from loads of cows freaks me out to, puts me in mind of the reason I stopped buying mince and ready chopped meat. Would just look at it and thing 'God how many cows/chickens/pigs are on my fork...?'

As someone else said, if a lot of these people passing comments here are avid bottle feeders and proud of it, why do they feel the need to get involved in these breastfeeding issues?
It's like me getting involved in a conversation about...tv programmes or something. Zero interest so why bother?

Big Cheese - your last comment is a little unfair I think. Many people have opinions on things that may not involve them but it doesn't make the opinion any less valid.

I have an opinion on who is president of USA but I don't have a vote!

Anyway people bottle feed for so many different reasons and some would like to give breast milk but perhaps not breast feed them selves.

Mind you I think most people find the thought of other womens breast milk a bit yukky but I think that is just a culture thing really.

Not sure where you are going with the analogy but so be it...

Actually the woman in charge of the breastbank said that they all thought that the reaction of the mothers would be urghhh, but she said to their amazement that not one person had reacted in this fashion, on the contrary were deeply touched by and appreciative of such a precious gift.

ha ha, no when I looked back at it myself, i wasn't sure what \i was on about.

just thought your comment slightly inflamatory (but wasn't surehow to spell that)

But I really don't see what the issue is even if comments are inflammatory to some! Isn't that the nature of a discussion? People can be as inflammatory as they like to me, (water off a duck's back and all that. i love it in fact!)

BTW been thinking more about your analogy. If we go with it, the logic is that as essentially you are powerless and voiceless in the American elections then by definition bottlefeeders are powerless and voiceless in this discussion.

Geddit??!!

I would happily donate milk if I had some to spare, and I would have happily used donated breastmilk for my oldest when she was in the NICU and my milk hadn't come in yet.

But I don't think I would have bought it, no. Once it was established that she would never be able to nurse we were resigned to formula.

I don't believe that you can get paid for donating blood in the US. (I did however get "paid" an extra vacation day at work for donating blood, which I thought was a great incentive.)

Wouldn't sell & wouldn't buy.

On the same topic, not that long ago (100 years maybe and before that too) women from better off families did have nannies that breast fed their children (can't rememeber the term in English). Very common in a lot of countries all over the world in those days. i wonder if this is still practised anywhere?