My Breasts Save Lives

I'm guessing, after reading the title I will have the attention of some and will have lost it for others. I can guarantee my brother is not going to read this. :o)

I had the privilege last week of donating my breast milk to the milk bank of Ohio to help premature/ill babies.

I have heard of other women pumping and donating their breast milk that were grieving the lost of their babies. It was healing and good therapy for those bereaved moms.

Here's my story on how I came to be a breast milk donor:
(feel free to tune me out if you get bored...or like in my brother's case, if you're grossed out you can tune me out too)

Cayman was over 4 weeks old before I could really try feeding her at the breast and by then she wanted nothing to do with it. She was still really tiny and weak so we didn't push the issue. If she was eating from a bottle we were just thrilled to not be using her G-tube. So I continued to pump around the clock for her. Seven months later I'm still pumping. It has gotten a little easier. In the beginning I pumped 8 times in a 24 hour period. Now I pump 5-6 times. At each pumping session I have always expressed more milk than Cayman's intake. All the extra milk I have stored in a deep freeze. As the freezer started to fill up I got so excited thinking that soon I would stop pumping and Cayman would have enough food in the freezer for the next several months.

Not bound by pumping anymore would mean a freer schedule and less bottles to wash.

(We go through about 18 bottles a day)

I made it a goal to pump until she was 6 months old.

As her 6 month birthday approached, I started to pull out the oldest frozen milk and thaw it.

Cayman refused to drink it!

I couldn't believe it!! I thought maybe the milk had gone bad. I had been told that breast milk stored in a deep freeze will keep for 6-12 months.

So I pulled out some milk that had only been frozen for a week. Same thing happened. Cayman refused to drink it. I got on the phone with my lactation consultant in a near state of panic. I had calculated over 3000 ounces were stored in the deep freeze and Cayman wouldn't eat any of it!I'll cut the story down for you and jump right to what we discovered was the problem.

My breast milk has an excess amount of Lipase, which is an enzyme that breaks down fat. This does happen but it is not a very common occurrence. When there is an abundance of this enzyme it starts to break down some of the fat in the breast milk during the freezing process. After the milk is thawed it has a rancid odor and taste. That is why Cayman did not like it. The milk is still good but just tastes terrible.

Scalding (bubbling around the edges but not boiling) the milk is the recommended solution for excessive Lipase. Scalding inactivates the lipase then it can be frozen. But once the milk has acquired the rancid smell, treating the milk will not help.

So my 3000 stored ounces were useless to me if Cayman wouldn't drink it. I was devastated to think that my hard work was going to be thrown away.

My lactation consultant told me that my milk could be donated. It gets pasteurized, killing bacteria and the rancid taste, but still preserves the precious antibodies. So I contacted the milk bank of Ohio and got the donation process on its way.

I could only go back 4 months and donate that milk, but that was still around 2500 ounces! The milk bank people were ecstatic to receive my donation.It feels so good to know I'm helping other babies. I confess I did not have such a feel-good attitude the day I learned about my stored milk situation. You can ask Mike, he'll tell you how I walked around sulking. That night before I went to bed, I asked God to help change my attitude about it. When I woke up that next morning I had two beautiful thoughts that completely changed me:

1. Maybe the extra Lipase helps Cayman be healthy. It is an enzyme that helps her body break down and digest fat and I've been reading a lot about DHA and other fatty oils being so healthy for brain development.
2. There's a shortage of breast milk being donated. Perhaps my milk donation is answering some mom's prayer for her ill baby.

So now I'm going on seven plus months of pumping because I am convinced that it helps Cayman and all the extra milk goes in the freezer to help other babies.

I hope it becomes kind of a "Pay It Forward" thing.

It's all part of making a beautiful world.

For those of you that made it through reading this blog (like I said, I'm pretty sure I lost my brother), I'm creating a "Pay It Forward" contest in celebration of saving lives. Here's the rules:

• All entries will go in a hat and I will draw out 1 name that will be the winner.
• The prize is a secret (that's just because I haven't chosen it yet. It'll be good though. I promise it will not be breast milk.)
• You have to spread the love if you are indeed the winner. It doesn't have to break the bank just something from the heart that you want to give or do for someone. This is a cool website telling you "how to pay it forward".
  
• Final day for entries will be on Friday (Oct. 17th) at midnight. I will post the winner the next day.
  
• To enter the contest you have to comment on this post answering this question:
  Mike and I hope to take a vacation with Cayman next year. What's an ideal vacation to take with a baby?
  
  For those of you who are technology challenged and can't figure out how to leave a comment but want to get in on this fun, you can email me your comment at kris_lmt@yahoo.com.