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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Milk update!

All my loyal readers probably know we've been on a search for breast milk. I thought I'd include the email I sent to over 40 yes 40! moms who wrote me offering breast milk!

This picture is 3 full coolers of milk that we just received from Hechung, a micro-preemie mom in Southern California. Someone heard my request for a Currier (Michelle from my local twins club) and offered up her father to bring up the milk from Sothern California. I don't think he knew what he was offering. Look at these 3 huge coolers!



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Copy of the email I sent to mom's offering milk:

I am so terribly sorry it’s taken me so long to respond to your wonderful offer of breast milk for my daughter Kaitlyn.

I was taken aback by the number of responses I received from sending my email to the San Francisco Mother’s Club, (I guess it shows the power of viral email), as I’ve received emails and comments on my blog from moms all over the country! I received over 30 personal emails of moms offering to donate milk for Kaitlyn!!! The goodness of people touches my heart in such a way I can’t even describe. It also overwhelmed me, as I wanted to write a personal reply to everyone! When times are really tough for us (ie: Kaitlyn has vomited 10+ times a day), I think of all the wonderful mothers out there who have offered their precious liquid gold to us to help and it helps me get through the day.

Some mom’s offered to pump extra for us, or even to relactate again if they had stopped breast feeding! Wow, the generosity of these offers leaves me truly speechless, how horrible of me to take over a week to respond!

I so wanted to write everyone back personally, and at the same time became overwhelmed with normal taking care of Kaitlyn duties, as my husband was out of town for a week, I had to train a new news and had a root canal on top of everything (not to mention that I do work also). That it’s taken my way too long to answer to your most generous offer.

My good news is that a fellow Micro Preemie Mom from Southern California (Who I’d emailed in the past) heard that I needed milk. Her daughter was born at 24 weeks gestation and had been pumping ever since her daughters birth. Although her daughter never learned to breast feed, she is able to take breast milk from a bottle, but has shown a dislike for frozen breast milk. The mom had an entire full standing freezer full of breast milk and offered it to Kaitlyn. She used to write me while her daughter was still in the NICU, asking me questions and wanting support. I guess it’s her amazing way of giving back to me!

My task was to try to get the up here to us in the Bay Area (as I’ve paid for shipping for milk across country and it’s very expensive). A wonderful woman saw my request and offered up her father as a currier (he was visiting in Long Beach). We arranged for him to meet the preemie mom, and he brought us up 3 gigantic coolers of milk earlier this week.

We are hoping to try to start transitioning Kaitlyn to a “Blenderized Diet” which will basically be real food, put through a super special blender and then pushed into her belly. Think of it this way, once babies are over a year, a good portion of their diet consists of solids, but Kaitlyn refuses to take anything by mouth. All of her food has to be liquid. My desire to keep her off formula stems from her non-tolerance of it, as well as the fact that the older tube-fed children formula is full of corn syrup and other things that we wouldn’t give to “normal” child that did eat by mouth, so why should I feed my child this stuff?. I’m really, really hoping that the transition will finally solve our vomiting problems. Which then in the long run will hopefully help her to have positive oral experiences which may causer her to want to eat.

Currently, as her vomiting has been very bad the last 6 weeks or so, she’s back to refusing to eat or drink anything again.

Thank you thank you for your offer of milk. For the time being at least I think we are fairly well set on milk and hopefully by the time that we can successfully transition Kaitlyn to a blenderized diet we can “wean” her off breast milk. I’m hoping it’s ok if I keep your contact information and should we get low again I’d love to contact you back (should you still have your milk that is).

In the mean time if you do have extra milk and want to donate it, here are a few options for you:

The milk bank in San Jose: San Jose Milk Bank
Milk Share group on Yahoo. Milk Share Group on Yahoo
After I posted my request on my blog, I had a mom recommend the Milk Share Group on Yahoo. I never asked on the group for milk, as by that time I had so many offers of local milk. But there are many requests for milk for babies in need that if you have extra milk to donate, this may be a good place for you.




2 comments:

Laura said...

i used to donate to the mother's milk bank years ago. it's a great thing indeed and the generosity of others is amazing.
i wanted to say hello again.
my son was an ex 24 weeker and g tube dependent for some time. he is now 5 years old and g tube free since last year. i must wholeheartedly endorse the blended food diet. it was nutritionally the best thing ever for our son, next to the bank milk he received.
our gi, dr berquist was non-pcomittal when we first started but after a year was singing its praises too.
good luck when you start on that. i definitely recommend a vitamix which you can receive a medical discount for with a script from your doctor.
good luck!

Anonymous said...

I just found your blog, and I must say thank you on learning more about milk banks.

I have never been able to produce milk, and I had a preemie and she just couldn't tolerate formula. I looked and looked for places to get milk from.

Sadly, she passed away earlier this month. She was just a little over 10 weeks old. If I'm able to have another baby, I will go to the resources that you had in your blog.

Again, thank you so much for the information.