Lucy tells her story of receiving donor milk for baby Ada
It had been nearly a year since I had my double mastectomy and since then a lot of things I hadn’t imagined happening, happened. We weren’t expecting to get pregnant so when I started feeling poorly, pregnancy never crossed my mind. After all, we’d taken permanent precautions, I had said goodbye to the baby stage of parenthood, celebrated the “lasts” and sent my littlest off to school. As far as I was concerned it was done. The mastectomy would be a turning point in my life once I healed. Imagine our shock on that Friday in November when we found out I was indeed pregnant. Once the initial shock cleared, the next thing I thought was how I was going to feed this baby. I had no breasts.
This was important to me as I breastfed each of my boys for 3 years each, battling multiple allergies and a very tight posterior tongue tie, and I trained as a peer supporter and volunteered in our local breastfeeding cafe helping other mothers. I found the science behind breastfeeding very interesting. The thought of not being able to breastfeed this baby truly broke me.
I knew I needed to source some donor milk for her. I did my initial research before stumbling upon the Hearts Milk bank website. I had a chat with a lovely lady from the milk bank who really understood where I was coming from. My GP had already applied for funding for donor milk from the local CCG, only to be rejected on the basis that it was not “medically necessary”. Well, I disagreed with that assessment. I live with diabetes and it has been shown that breastfeeding can protect children from developing diabetes in later life amongst other conditions. Then there is the mental health side, which I think is just as valid as my physical health. I was so relieved to hear that we could still access some donor milk from the Hearts Milk Bank.
My waters broke when I was only 35+3 weeks pregnant which just complicated matters. We weren’t due to pick up the donor milk until a few days later, so making phone calls to rearrange things was my priority. My husband made an essential trip to the Hearts Milk Bank on the mainland (we live on the Isle of Wight) to pick up the milk and we were given hospital packs as well as your standard 200ml bottles.
I was so happy to see our milk freezer filled with donor milk just for my baby who was in SCBU at this moment. It seemed even more important that she should be able to access some donor milk. She started on 1ml per hour through her tube and by the time we were discharged, she was on 70ml every 3hrs.
Ada absolutely thrived on donor milk reaching and then surpassing her birth weight by day 17. We are sharing our story to raise awareness, and I’m so happy I could do this for my baby.
