Don’t throw away your extra milk, look into the Donation of Breast Milk
Why look into the donation of breast milk?
You can help save the life of an infant by donating your extra milk.
According to Mother’s Milk Bank of Austin (the largest non-profit milk bank in the world), research shows preemies fed human milk avoid serious medical complications.
- One in 8 babies are born premature, yet half of mothers of preemies aren’t able to provide their baby with breast milk.
- 60,000 babies are born each year in the US weight 3.5 lbs or less.
- 79% decrease in risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) with a human milk diet.
- 15 Million babies are born preterm annually worldwide.
- 5 ounces of milk can feed a 2 lb baby for 24 hours.
Donation of Breast Milk vs Selling Breast Milk:
With baby number 2, I had thrown away an entire freezer milk (all of those hours pumping down the drain).
Shortly after I had thrown it all away, I learned that some mom’s sell their extra milk and was like heck yeah! Great way to make some extra money!
Our experience trying to sell our milk…
When baby number three was about 3 months old, I had a freezer full of milk again. So, I posted an ad to sell my milk for a dollar an ounce.
The first inquiry I received was a lady telling me she needed milk for a baby. She told me she was going to pay me an extra $220 dollars through pay pal and that I needed to pay the courier who would pick up my milk. Apparently, they could not accept any other form of payment except for cash. My scam radar went up and after going back and forth with her on it, I backed out. I did find out on the website a few days later that she has had several accounts flagged for spam.
Then one man reached out wanting to buy my milk for his baby. However, as we started arranging delivery he started asking me to include photos of myself with the milk so he knew which mom this was coming from. Ummmm…why do you need to know that and why do you need multiple photos of me….weird…so I stopped communications.
A few days later, I had another man reach out asking to buy my milk for himself apparently he says he drinks it to help him bulk up at the gym. (and yes apparently this is a thing!) TODAY has an entire article about this trend. You can check it out HERE.
Even when I had the ad changed to be ONLY FOR NEEDY Babies, I still received the majority of inquiries from men.
Selling milk was not for us…
There is no judgement for the women that choose to sell their breast milk to men, trust me I was tempted (and could have made close to a $1,000 by now which is hard to walk away from).
To each their own, but for me that was just too weird. After about two weeks, I took the ad down. I also started doing some soul searching during this time and decided I really wanted the milk going to a baby that needs it.
Our Experience Donating Breast Milk…
I started googling what to do with extra milk and looking for milk banks. It was surprisingly hard to find great information out there. I tried googling Milk donation near me, breast milk donation near me, milk donation bank, breast milk donation center and only a few options popped up and most were not near me. I was ecstatic when I came across Mother’s Milk Bank of Austin and that I could ship my milk to them. We immediately started the process and a little over 2 weeks later we shipped our first box.
Considering you are donating human tissue, it is a surprisingly easy process. I just needed to complete an online application, have a brief phone screen and then complete some lab work. The Mother’s Milk bank of Austin will cover the cost of shipping you the supplies and reimburse you for dry ice (if you are not near one of their drop off locations).
Baby 3 and I just shipped our third package of milk to them today. We have donated over 750 ounces of extra milk to date.
Places to Sell Breast Milk
OnlyTheBreast.com
Selling milk and Milk Donation
This is an open market for selling breast milk and you can sell your milk. OnlyTheBreast recommends not selling for more than a $1 per ounce or it can invite scammers. They do have an entire section on to recognize and avoid scams. If you go this route I strongly encourage you to read it very carefully.
BreastFeedingMomsUnite.com
Selling milk and Milk Donation
Their website states they are one of the biggest worldwide marketplaces for donating, buying and selling breast milk. They state that rates usually range from $1 to $4 per ounce.
There are facebook groups as well where you can sell your milk, there is an CNBC article that highlights a few of these groups. Some of these Facebook groups are closed, meaning that outsiders can view them but cannot join without approval, such as Human Milk For Babies, a group that has more than two thousand members and promotes donation rather than sales of milk, and Buy, Sell, and Donate Breast Milk, with more than 5,000 members. Others are open pages, like the Human Milk 4 Human Babies Global Network, which has more than 80,000 likes.
Tiny Treasures Milk Bank/Prolacta Bioscience
http://tinytreasuresmilkbank.com/
Tiny Treasures does pay you $1 for every qualified ounce of breast milk received. The milk is used by Prolacta Bioscience to make human milk products and then sold to NICUs for preemies. They do have you test your freezer, submit a DNA swab and blood test. In addition, as of January 2020, they also have very strict pre-qualifications, including never testing positive for HPV as of January 2020.
According to the CDC, HPV is so common that almost every person who is sexually-active will get HPV at some time in their life if they don’t get the HPV vaccine.
Milk Donation
European Milk Bank Association
https://europeanmilkbanking.com/
This website has 248 active milk banks in Europe.
Milk Banking Association of North America
Has 29 member milk banks and their locations.
The King’s Daughters Milk Bank
The King’s Daughters Milk Bank is partnered with Children’s Hospital of the The King’s Daughter (CHKD). CHKD has two offsite donation centers, Virginia Beach, VA and Rockville, MD. Looking at their website they will ship you a cooler for your donation if you are donating a minimum of 200 ounces. They also state that the DO NOT charge their hospitalized patients for pasteurized donor human milk and it is not reimbursed by insurance. However, other hospitals maybe charged a processing fee which is paid for by the hospital and not the family.
Mother’s Milk Bank at Austin
This is the milk bank that we donate to, in part they were the first one that we found that clearly stated we could ship our milk to them if we had over 200 ounces to donate. It has been an easy process for us.
In closing, I know pumping is not fun!
Moms, I know pumping isn’t fun, I promise a post about that in the future. However, for a sneak peek as I know it relates to this post, I highly recommend you check out and invest in one of the hand and cord free pumps, like Willow or Elvie.
