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Because of its perfect balance of nutrients, immune-boosting properties, and easy digestibility breast milk provides optimal food for infant growth and development. While not all new moms are able to breastfeed now there may be a new option.
Milk banks provide human breast milk to the neediest babies who otherwise wouldn't get this nutritional and developmental boost.
Who Benefits From Milk Banks?
Premature infants weighing less than 1,500 grams (about 3 pounds, 5 ounces) at birth receive the bulk of the milk from human milk banks, explains Nancy Wight, MD, neonatologist, and professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. Babies who reject formula and, as a result, experience inadequate growth, are also prime candidates for milk banks.
Neonatologists prescribe breast milk for these infants because of the specific advantages it offers. Breast milk protects against necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal disease to which premature infants are susceptible. "It gives these babies three to four times more protection. To me, that's a big seller," says Donna More, administrator of Delaware-based Christiana Care Health system's milk bank, in operation since 1947.
Premature babies fed breast milk have shorter stays in neonatal intensive care units than those who consume formula -- about 15 days on average -- and are less likely to develop retinopathy (retina problems that can lead to poor vision), notes Mary Rose Tully, director of Lactation Services at University of North Carolina Hospital and past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, an organization established in 1985 to promote and support safe donor milk banking.
"Overall, babies do better on breast milk," More says emphatically.