Sam de Polo-Brown

I first heard about milk donation from the lady who fitted my nursing bra. I didn’t even know about milk donation and was amazed when she explained that even the smallest amount of milk was helpful to poorly premature babies.

After giving birth to my gorgeous little man – Myles, my plan was to exclusively breast feed. After a few weeks my parents were itching to babysit and my husband and I fancied a night out so I expressed some milk and off we went! Unfortunately Myles had other plans – he didn’t like bottles. Any bottle and believe me we tried them all. In the end I gave up trying because it wasn’t worth the stress and I love breastfeeding anyway, thankfully my family and friends are all very supportive. Unfortunately my freezer was full of bags of frozen milk which I couldn’t use. I couldn’t bare the thought of throwing it all away; and then I remembered the lady who fitted my nursing bra.

I googled it and found that milk banks did in fact exist! The nearest milk bank to me was the Cheshire and North Wales Milk Bank so I eagerly got it touch. I had to have a simple blood test at my local doctors and then got the go ahead. I can’t tell you how excited I was to receive my first box of bottles to fill! At 3oz per bottle it didn’t seem too daunting either. I set myself the task of just filling 50 bottles. Now, I don’t consider that I have lots of milk because even at 7 months old Myles still feeds every 2 hours and at first I was worried I might not have enough milk to go spare or that it might interfere with Myles’ feeding. I also thought it would be very time consuming and being a new Mum time is something you don’t have very much of!

However despite my concerns I thought I’ll give it a go and see what happens. I am so glad I did! Within a few days I found that if I fed Myles and expressed at the same time I could fill a bottle in about 5 minutes especially if I did it in the morning. I now express a bottle a day and it is so rewarding. I would encourage any breastfeeding Mum to just give it a go!

Myles looked a little worried when he saw his milk disappearing through the door when I had my first collection but he quickly realised theres plenty left for him!