Milk bank

After nursing and pumping milk for both babies, I found that I naturally had a fairly large milk supply. I felt very blessed for this gift and both of my girls benefited greatly from this. After nursing Lauren for 6 months, I found that I was still coming up with a large supply of milk that I was freezing every day. So I decided to look into milk donation.

I contacted the milk bank at the University of Iowa. They have a wonderful program set up to help premature and term infants in Iowa. The milk is used for the following (from the U of I website): hospitalized premature infants, infants born with immunological defects, insufficient milk supply, adopted infants, mother illness requiring brief cessation of breast feeding.

All that I had to do was a an over the phone interview and a blood test. I was able to just run up to our local hospital lab to have the blood drawn. After I was approved by the milk bank then I just had to start collecting the milk into the containers that I had and the containers that they provided.

There are some rules that I had to follow to donate milk because the milk goes to premature infants (no donation if kids are sick, if I had Tylenol, if I had a large amount of caffeine, etc.). It was pretty easy to follow the instructions.

There are multiple bank drop offs in Iowa. I was able to drop mine off at Mercy Hospital in downtown Des Moines. There are also locations in Iowa City and other towns as well.

It was a very easy thing for me to do and I am so glad that I was able to do it. I just wanted to put this info out there for anyone who has maybe never heard of the milk bank. It is a great opportunity for anyone who might be able to help another child.