As soon as you find a woman, who can be a potential breast milk donor for your baby, the first thing you should ask her is when she delivered. You should keep in mind that newborns’ nutritional needs differ a lot from babies, which are three months old or six months old, etc. Every woman’s breast milk naturally matches these needs over time. The more recently this woman delivered, the more fat there is in her breast milk. The best way for you is try to find a donor, whose baby is of nearly the same age as yours. It is possible that a baby can thrive on the milk of a woman, whose milk is in tune with a younger child; however, the reverse may not be predicted. For instance a newborn baby would be able to thrive on the milk of a woman, who delivered within the last three months; however he would not be able to thrive on the less fat milk of a woman, who delivered six month ago. Therefore, after about half a year the content of the breast milk becomes stable, and any child of this age and older can be fed with this milk.
When you are looking for a breast milk donor, you should ask every woman about her lifestyle and eating habits. Do not forget to ask if a potential donor if she smokes and / or drinks, if she keeps taking prenatal vitamins. There is one more appropriate thing to do – you should request a letter from her child’s pediatrician, where it would be stated that the woman makes a good candidature for being a breast milk donor. The reason of her being a good candidate is her child’s thriving and normal development, based on her milk. It is also necessary to make sure that this woman’s baby will not suffer from lack of milk, if his mother donates some of her breast milk. Every potential breast milk donor is to be requested to undergo a blood test as well as complete physical examination in order to make sure that the milk, you are going to feed your baby with will not pass on any preventable harmful diseases.
Before you choose a breast milk donor for your baby, you should make sure that the woman knows milk collection and milk storage safety rules, do not forget to ask her what kind of freezer she uses. You should be aware of that a deep freeze freezer is considered to be the safest way of breast milk storage, however, a simple refrigerators freezer would also be satisfactory. In case if you see that the woman is not sure about milk collection and milk storage safety rules, you may offer to help educate her by giving her some literature or ask her to apply to some lactation consultants or milk bank professionals for an advise. While you will be interviewing the potential breast milk donor, you will have to determine that you do feel that this woman is quite a responsible person, and that she is trustworthy enough to put your baby’s health in her hands (however, in this case it is even possible to say in her breasts).
In case if a woman, you have chosen to be a breast milk donor for your baby, pumps her milk every three hours, which makes eight times a day, and if she spends about twenty minutes pumping and washing all the equipment, which is necessary for this pumping procedure, in average it makes that she goes through fifty six milk pumping procedures a week, which means that she spends eighteen and a half hours a week pumping her breast milk and cleaning all the equipment, necessary for this pumping procedure. This is the reason why many breast milk donors ask to receive some kind of compensation for their time as well as effort, spent in such a way, in addition to the cost of pump or pump rental and the breast milk storage bags. The amount of money most women ask for varies somewhere between $25 - 200 per week.
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