Jennifer’s Story

Why I Donated

by Jennifer K.

What interested my husband and me in donating my excess breastmilk is that our son drank donor milk for the first 2 days of his life while we were in the hospital. We were so grateful for donor milk at that time. I had to be rushed to the OR right after giving birth and had hemorrhaging. I later learned that that likely caused my milk to come in a little later. After we discharged home, my milk hadn’t come in yet, so he had to drink formula. His body didn’t tolerate it. We debated buying donor milk if my milk didn’t come in soon. Thankfully, my milk came in after one day and it came in with a giant WHOOSH. I was overflowing with milk! Others told us to sell the breast milk but we will always remember that our son drank donor milk during his first days of life. It was nice to finally be able to donate ourselves. It’s also nice to have room in our freezers for food again. LOL.

Our only donation regret is that we didn’t donate sooner. We had no idea what to expect with the breastfeeding journey. We were nervous that we wouldn’t save enough. However, after filling up our freezers with breastmilk and having to get another freezer for breastmilk plus giving away several coolers of breastmilk to a friend, we realized we definitely had enough to donate! And then we couldn’t donate soon enough! Hopefully I have excess breastmilk again the next time we have a child as we have definitely learned a lot throughout this process and could donate breastmilk more efficiently in the future.

Thank you for taking my excess milk and putting it to good use!