Last month, Time ran a story on milk sharing. There’s a wave of new moms whose babies need supplemental breast milk who are using Facebook to connect with women who have extra milk to give away.” Facebook pages such as Eats on Feets and Informed Choice have helped orchestrate dozens of matches, and now milk sharing seems to be all the rage.
Sharing breast milk isn’t anything new, and wet nurses were once common among the upper class. Yet in the age of HIV, it has been viewed as dangerous in more recent years. Pediatricians recommend that mothers buy milk through milk banks that screen and pasteurize donated milk. This, of course, is expensive and a day’s supply can cost more than $100. Tracking down donated milk through Facebook has made milk sharing convenient and economical.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration is concerned about this new trend and released a warning about the use of donor breast milk.
If you’re interested in feeding your baby donor breast milk instead of formula if you can’t provide sufficient breast milk yourself, the FDA recommends that you:
- Talk with your pediatrician. All babies’ nutritional needs are different and you should discuss your baby’s particular situation with your doctor.
- Consider safety risks, including exposure to infectious diseases such as HIV, chemical contaminants or prescription drugs, as well as proper storage and handling of the milk.
- Avoid using milk acquired through the internet. Donor milk acquired through the Internet is unlikely to have been adequately screened for infectious disease or contamination risk. Also, you can’t be certain that the milk was stored correctly.
- Only use screened milk. Obtain human milk through banks that take voluntary steps to screen milk donors, and safely collect, process, handle, test, and store the milk. Find milk banks: hmbana.org.
In other words, the FDA seems to be saying that you shouldn’t acquire free breast milk through Facebook. Is the governmental organization wise to get involved and deter moms from online milk sharing, or are they stomping all over a wonderful thing?
Photo: Flickr/Daquella manera