Elisabeth Anderson-Sierra, a mother from Oregon, has been hailed as a ‘miracle mum’ following her collection of over 3,500 L breastmilk (5000 pints). Elisabeth has provided half of this amount to the Californian bioscience company Prolacta, and has shared the rest with parents in her local community.

Prolacta Bioscience is one of a number of commercial organisations that pay mothers for the milk that they receive. In common with blood and tissue donations, human milk banks globally recruit mothers to donate their milk. Expenses may be reimbursed in some countries and by some milk banks, but the provision of milk is overwhelmingly an altruistic act.  Both UKAMB and the European Milk Bank Associationendorses the donation of milk for a number of reasons linked to safety and security of supply. Both organisations also provide recommendations around the safe sharing of human milk.

Having this amount of surplus breastmilk is an unusual situation, in which the mother may be spending huge amounts of time and energy managing her oversupply. In the article, Elisabeth states that she spends 10 hours a day expressing her milk. Milk banks have a responsibility to mothers and their babies to ensure that there is no encouragement placed upon the mother to produce milk, beyond what is good for her and her own baby or babies. We recommend that mothers do not start to express milk for the milk bank until their breastfeeding is fully established, although there are situations where mothers need to express for other reasons.

Gillian Weaver, Natalie Shenker