Mum Natalie wrote to us last night about her experience of being in hospital with a premature baby.

“I received donor milk for my 32 weeker. The hospital I was in arranged this and I could not be more grateful to the super women that donate their milk. I was extremely unwell and it took over 5 days for my milk to come in and probably another week for me to express enough to meet the needs of my little 3lb baby. Thank you doesn’t cover the gratitude I feel. It took the pressure off and allowed me small amount of time to recover. These women are amazing and I hope they know what it means for mums like me who want their babies to have nature’s choice and cannot offer it themselves.

I would hand express 0.1 ml of colostrum in 22 hours – it was so painful. And then I’d sit on a pump for ½ hour every 3 hours to produce nothing. My son turned out to be dairy intolerant so the donor milk was an even bigger gift as he would have had additional things to deal with had he been given formula.”