Milk donors

You and your baby come first. We are only able to accept milk that is truly surplus to your baby’s needs and can help if you would like to manage an oversupply down. If you are mixed breast and formula feeding or if your baby has been diagnosed with cow’s milk protein allergy or other food intolerance, please contact the milk bank team for advice.

We are unable to accept donations if you are smoking, vaping or using any nicotine replacement products or if your partner or other household member smokes or vapes in the house. However, we recommend that you don’t stop breastfeeding as the recommendations for milk donors are very different from those when breastfeeding your own baby. Please contact the milk bank team if you would like more advice.

If you do smoke or vape, you may be able to join a research study run in collaboration with Imperial College London that is helping scientists understand better ways to screen women for cancer. Please contact the team to find out more.

Some medications may exclude you from donating milk for preterm or sick infants, even though they are safe to take when breastfeeding your own baby. Please contact us to discuss, as some of these medications may be acceptable for donation for full term or older babies.

Yes we can. Please note that it must have been expressed into sterile bags or other suitable containers within the last 3 months. Expressed milk needs to have been refrigerated immediately and then frozen within 24 hours of being expressed. We will ask you some questions about the time when you were expressing the milk and we will also need each container to be labelled.

Yes, you can start expressing as soon as you receive the milk containers, or even sooner if you store your milk into bags. Please note that we cannot arrange to collect your milk until we have had your results back from the lab.

The Hearts Milk Bank asks donors to use a pump that is new to them, unless it is a hired or hospital grade pump that is designed for use by more than one person. This is because a normal second-hand pump may contain micro-organisms and biofilms from the previous owner that cannot be easily removed via cleaning as these can get inside the pump casing. Hospital grade pumps are cleaned between users and contain special valves to ensure that no micro-organisms can enter the pump casing.

If you have had a blood transfusion in the last 4 months your blood tests may need to be delayed. However, you can still collect and store milk for donation in the meantime. Please contact the milk bank team for more advice.

We ask for a minimum of 2 litres expressed within 8 – 9 weeks from our ongoing donors. This is to allow us time to arrange a collection of your milk and pasteurise it within 3 months, in line with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline. If your frozen milk is older than this please contact us to discuss.

Yes, all milk is precious to the families who receive your milk. However, we recommend that if you have not become a donor by the time your child is approaching their second birthday, it is best not to start. This is because it can be very difficult to maintain a supply once your toddler is over 2 years old, and research suggests that some of the elements of milk can start to reduce after 24 months as your child feeds less frequently.

Yes, your freezer where you store your expressed milk that you wish to donate should be kept at a consistent temperature of less than -18 degrees. We send all of our milk donors a recruitment pack which includes a thermometer so you can ensure your freezer is the correct temperature. We suggest storing your frozen milk as close as possible to the bottom of the freezer, as this is usually the coldest part.

Donated milk is tested for bacteria and pasteurized to kill any bacteria or viruses. It is then checked by the laboratory again for any contamination, and stored in a temperature-monitored freezer. It will be couriered while still frozen to one of the hospital neonatal units we supply.

The HMB adheres to guidelines developed in 2010 by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) regarding the screening, processing, and dispensing of donor milk to ensure its safety. Donor milk is specially heat-treated to destroy harmful bacteria or viruses. This process, called pasteurisation, heats milk very quickly to 62.5C before rapidly cooling the milk to limit the destruction of the health promoting components in the donated milk. Around 70% of the antibodies in the milk will usually survive and be functional to help the baby fight infections; all of the special sugars called oligosaccharides are preserved and functional after pasteurisation, which helps support the development of the gut, microbiome and immune system. As well as providing nutrition, human milk contains hundreds of other components that help the brain to develop, the baby to grow normally, and the immune system to develop. Heat treatment does not appear to markedly affect the nutritional quality of milk, and a study on full term babies fed with donor milk from the Hearts Milk Bank showed all babies grew as expected for their age and whether male or female.

Yes. The HMB aims to recruit enough donors and process enough milk to enable other patient groups to benefit when their mother’s own milk is not available. Donor milk can also be used as a bridge to support infants while their mothers establish a full milk supply. The Human Milk Foundation supports hundreds of families each year to feed their babies with human milk who would not be eligible for NHS-funded donor milk.

In common with non-profit milk banking and blood and tissue donation worldwide, we don’t offer payments for milk. If you need reimbursing for parking or travel to have your bloods taken, please let us know.

All new milk donors are asked to have a blood test to rule out HIV1 and 2, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV). You will have already been tested for most of these during your pregnancy, except for HTLV which is not routinely screened for in the UK.
All these viruses can be passed through breastmilk from a mother to a baby, so we need to rule out the possibility that you might have these and that they might be passed through to a baby in any breastmilk you donate.

HIV is a virus that weakens the immune system and can eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). There are two main types of this virus: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is the most common type of HIV and occurs all over the world. Around 95 percent of people living with HIV have HIV-1.
HIV-2 is mainly present in West Africa, but it is starting to appear in other regions, including the United States, Europe, and India. A person can contract either type of HIV through direct contact with bodily fluids that contain the virus, including blood, sexual fluids, and breastmilk.

Hepatitis is the term used to describe inflammation of the liver. It is usually the result of a viral infection or liver damage caused by drinking alcohol.

Hepatitis B is caused by the hepatitis B virus, which is spread in the blood of an infected person. It is a common infection worldwide and is usually spread from infected pregnant women to their babies, or from child-to-child contact. It can also be spread through unprotected sex and injecting drugs.
Hepatitis B is uncommon in the UK. Most cases affect people who became infected while growing up in parts of the world where the infection is more common, such as southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Most adults infected with hepatitis B can fight off the virus and fully recover from the infection within a couple of months. But most people infected as children develop a long-term infection. This is known as chronic hepatitis B, and it can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Antiviral medication can be used to treat it.

Hepatitis C is caused by the hepatitis C virus and is the most common type of viral hepatitis in the UK. It’s usually spread through blood-to-blood contact with an infected person. In the UK, it is most commonly spread through sharing needles used to inject drugs.
Hepatitis C often causes no noticeable symptoms, or only flu-like symptoms, so many people are unaware they’re infected. Around 1 in 4 people will fight off the infection and be free of the virus. In the remaining cases, it will stay in the body for many years.
This is known as chronic hepatitis C and can cause cirrhosis and liver failure. Chronic hepatitis C can be treated with very effective antiviral medications, but there’s currently no vaccine available.

Syphilis is a bacterial infection that’s usually caught by having sex with someone who is infected. Some people with syphilis have no symptoms but if it is left untreated for years, syphilis can spread to the brain or other parts of the body and cause serious long-term problems including damage to the brain, eyes, heart, nerves, bones, joints, and liver.

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus types 1 and 2 (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2) are retroviruses that are found worldwide. HTLV-1 can cause a form of blood cancer; adult T-cell leukaemia or lymphoma (ATL) or a progressive disease of the nervous system called HTLV-1 associated myelopathy. Although HTLV is relatively uncommon in the UK, approximately 22,000 people live with the virus and so it is important that we test for it to ensure it is not passed through your milk.