Full Bellies: I Fed my Daughter Donor Milk

By Brienne of Tart
Posted on Sunday, July 3rd, 2016


I’ll be the first to admit that as a pregnant mom-to-be and new mother, my priorities were not in the right place. Rather than doing what was easiest or most sensible for me or my baby, I did what I assumed was “best” (mostly according to natural birth advocates) in a futile pursuit of perfection that I now realize is completely unattainable, being that parenting is utterly chaotic and unpredictable.

While every new mom wants the best outcome for herself and her baby, I was hyper-focused on this since I’d had an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 24 with a long-term boyfriend who was well on his way out of my life at that point. Being a young single mother would make me the target of excessive scrutiny and potential judgement from others, and despite these others being strangers with no impact on my life, it became overwhelmingly important for me to defy all stereotypes and prove anyone wrong who might consider me a lesser parent due to my circumstances.

As a scared, single, mother-to-be I was desperate for any sort of support. My proclivity toward “doing everything right” drew me to the natural-birth advocates and self-proclaimed “lactivists,” where together in online message boards and in-person birth circles we discussed all the supposed evils pitted against us, like hospitals with high C-section rates (or just hospitals in general), OBs more concerned with making their tee times than a mother’s individual labor progression, the toxicity of baby formula, the detrimental effects associated with not babywearing enough, you name it.

I happily jumped on the all-natural bandwagon. I did prenatal yoga multiple times a week and I only bought organic food, despite my meager income at the time. I wrote a meticulously detailed birth plan for the intervention-free natural birth I desired (though I left all ten copies in the printer tray at home the night I went into labor-- go figure). I watched The Business of Being Born and Pregnant in America, more propaganda that further supported what my fellow natural-birth advocates were preaching. I hired a doula, and I likely would have pursued a freestanding birth center or even home birth if I had been able to find a provider that would take my employer-sponsored insurance. I found someone over the internet who was practicing placenta encapsulation and agreed to do mine free of charge. I would have cloth diapered if my child’s daycare had taken them. I firmly believed that birth and breastfeeding were natural processes that the body; specifically, my body, would simply know how to do. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Though I did deliver naturally (albeit in a hospital setting) challenges with breastfeeding arose as my baby grew and my body did not produce more milk in turn. In the first few weeks things went smoothly enough, but I returned to work fairly early, around six weeks postpartum, with not much of a freezer stash saved up from maternity leave. Despite nursing morning and night, and pumping three times a day while at work, my daughter’s consumption exceeded my output by the time she was about 2 or 3 months old.

The simple solution would have been to supplement with formula, but of course I believed the lactivist hype that formula companies were EVIL and their products TOXIC. When I brought up my concerns with the lactivists, their responses were advice like, “Just nurse more!” but I was nursing as much as I could, plus pumping at work. Commence the side-eye. “Oh, I stay home. I’m so #blessed to have a husband who supports us,” came the responses. Yeah, didn’t have a husband. The advice of these supposed advocates was little more than smugness and judgement; apparently all I was supposed to do as a mom was sit around and nurse my baby all day.

Finally, someone suggested online communities where mothers were arranging milk-sharing; specifically, Eats on Feets and Human Milk for Human Babies. I wrote short introductions explaining my supply issues and very easily found several women who were willing to donate their excess breastmilk after a brief exchange of information online, mostly what their diet was or how old their babies were. There was no compensation involved; this was a simple supply and demand issue, and they had oversupply. Unlike a milk bank, these groups did not practice any sort of formal screening or storage processes. But to me, this was no problem – nursing moms were the healthiest people I knew, vigilantly watching everything they put into their body, plus we’d all been screened for HIV and such prior to giving birth as was the standard practice.

Was I naive and overly trusting? Absolutely. But I thoroughly believed all the studies claiming breastmilk’s myriad of benefits, so if I couldn’t produce enough, I was determined to use formula as an absolute last resort – no way I was going to deprive my child of a highly-debated additional 7 IQ points or a lowered risk of ear infections. Besides, it wasn’t all too long ago that wet nurses were commonplace, and procuring frozen pumped milk from another mom was just their modern-day equivalent. I surrounded myself with others whose opinions supported my decision, and ignored those who questioned the safety or necessity of what I was doing.

Meeting up to get milk felt like some sort of bizarre drug deal. One time, I drove across town to meet someone halfway at a Babies R’ Us parking lot; she opened the trunk of her car and transferred bags of frozen milk from her cooler to mine. Another donor was a devout Christian who felt donating milk was an act of service and devotion to God, or something. (I conveniently omitted the fact that I was an atheist when chatting with her.) Everyone I met seemed genuinely caring and trustworthy, and I didn’t get any bad vibes, so I continued to solicit donor milk for several months.

As it turns out, both my mother and her mother suffered from dwindling supply around 3 or so months postpartum (though I didn’t learn this until my daughter was nearly a year old; way too late to alleviate my anxiety). Yet, I was so convinced by the lactivist community that all I needed to do was nurse/pump more, eat more oatmeal/almonds, drink more water, or add fenugreek supplements and I would magically produce more breastmilk. I did all these things to no avail, and in frustrated desperation I turned to risky arrangements with internet strangers. My daughter is a happy and healthy kid, but “breast is best” had effectively brainwashed me, and I cringe now to consider what could have happened had the donors not been in good medical health, not stored or transported their milk properly, or had any malicious intent.

Looking back, I firmly believe that many of the things that expecting or new moms tend to focus on ultimately don’t make a huge difference. My daughter is in Pre-K now, and there’s absolutely no way of telling who was formula-fed versus breast-fed. Love, discipline, creating memories, boundary-setting, and strong relationships with caregivers are far more important than some formula here and there, organic crib sheets, or the best (see: most expensive) type of baby carrier. Eventually, I figured this out, but I spent months needlessly agonizing over low supply and milk procurement when the solution was right there in the grocery store aisles.


About the Author:
Brienne of Tart is a mother to a four-year-old girl working full-time in the field of civil rights enforcement. Formerly a single mom, now happily partnered and navigating the ups and downs of a blended family, she enjoys gardening, cooking, and snarking with internet friends over a great glass of wine.