E110: How Community Milk Sharing Bridges Feeding Gaps

Ever wonder how families bridge the gap when milk supply lags, a baby struggles to transfer, or adoption and prematurity change the feeding plan? We take you inside the world of human milk sharing—what it is, why families choose it, and how to do it safely—while honoring every parent’s comfort level and goals. Drawing on two decades in a busy doula and lactation practice, we share stories that show what’s possible: an oversupply helping a post-cesarean parent through the first days, a short-term donor stash supporting therapy for a weak suck, an adoptive parent inducing lactation and supplementing with community milk, and a grieving father fulfilling his partner’s wish to provide human milk for their baby.

We also map the landscape of options. Regulated milk banks screen donors, pasteurize pooled milk, and prioritize NICU and medically fragile infants, offering a gold standard for safety. Peer-to-peer sharing connects neighbors and local parents through networks like Human Milk for Human Babies and Eats on Feets, where clear ground rules and transparency matter. We break down the questions to ask about health history, medications, nicotine or substance exposure, storage practices, and labeling, plus the nuts and bolts of transport—coolers, ice, and keeping the cold chain intact.

If you’re navigating delayed onset after surgery, experiencing a formula shortage, caring for a preterm baby with sensitive digestion, or building supply after adoption, human milk can still be within reach. Our goal is to give you practical steps, credible options, and the confidence to choose what aligns with your values. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who might need it, and leave a review to help more families discover safe, community-centered ways to feed their babies.

Visit our website, here: https://birthlearning.com/
Follow us on Facebook at Birth Learning
Follow us on Instagram at @birthlearning

Show Credits

Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker

Chapters

• 0:10 Setting The Stage: Best Baby Foods
• 2:18 Introducing Human Milk Sharing
• 4:44 Donor Milk Banks And NICU Use
• 8:41 Benefits And Tolerance Of Human Milk
• 12:18 Real Stories: Oversupply To Rescue
• 17:26 Short‑Term Bridges And Tough Latches

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.

SPEAKER_01: 0:52

I am your host, and I'm excited to be here with you today. So our topic today um is I don't know, a little interesting. This topic has to do with lactation. So somewhere in my lactation hat today. Um and as we know, as we're feeding babies, you know, a lot of times I'll as I work with clients, we'll talk to them um about what's the best food for their baby and their milk is the best food for their baby. Science tells us that um we we know that it's like super bioavailable for the baby, it's customized to the baby. So mother's milk is best food for the baby. The second best food for a baby is human milk. Um, human milk has incredible components um that we could dive into the science of all of that. And then the third best food for baby is prepared formula, whether that's powdered or um pre-mix. Pre-mix technically is better. Um, but formula is the third best food for a baby. So what I want to talk about today is something that happens quite a lot more than you would think. For some people, this is gonna be a like, yep, of course, topic in their mind. Other people, it's gonna be a strange, new, bizarre um concept. Um, but it this is kind of happening a lot in our world, and I don't know that we always know about that. So that is milk sharing. So human milk sharing. And that is um something to consider. A lot of families do it. Um, a lot of families choose not to do it, and there's no right or wrong. It's definitely just what you're comfortable with. But I kind of want to talk about that concept and why that's um how to do it, um, why it could be ideal or a benefit in some situations. So the reality of things um is that not all parents can produce enough milk for their baby for a variety of reasons. Now, given appropriate lactation support and education, um, support coming from professionals, support coming from people in your inner circle in your life, um, support sometimes that's emotional support. Um, but still not all people can produce enough milk for their baby. Um, in the United States, we have really pretty great access to clean water, which is a blessing. I don't think we realize um there's some parts in the world that um human milk is ideal because access to, well, it's always ideal, but access to clean water um is really risky and dangerous. Um, but the there have been, we in recent years experienced a shortage of formula. Um, the cost of formula can be kind of astronomical, estimated anywhere from, yeah, depending on the age of the baby, and then type of the formula, anywhere from like three to eight hundred dollars a month to feed a little baby. Um, so cost can be a little prohibitive sometimes. And then we did experience a time when there were shortages. So when we look at the the role of community in feeding babies has always been there. Um, historically, there have been wet nurses um in lots of different cultures. Um, wet nurses were if once someone starts lactating, they can continue for an indefinite amount of time as long as the stimulation remains there. So some people would lactate and never stop. So they would be over their job would to be be a wet nurse. And that's a fascinating um history and role that we could dive into sometime. But um, that has been actually human milk sharing has been around for a really long time. So let's be clear on what milk sharing is. It's when a lactating person provides expressed breast milk, pumped milk, um, to an infant who's not their own. So that can be done in multiple ways. And and sometimes it's just friends and family, um, there's community groups, there's it's often just peer-to-peer, right? So let's talk about a couple um couple instances where that could be the case. Sometimes when um there's an adoption situation or a surrogacy, surrogacy situation, or non-gestational parents are wanting to feed, then those can come into play in uh in addition to what's very common is a low milk supply. Um, we also have more formal milk sharing places, which is regulated milk banks. So there's a lot of donor screening there. And I've had clients donate to milk banks. Um, there's some health screenings, there's some um pretty strict guidelines on storage and handling of milk, which is awesome. So these milk banks take the milk donated from a variety of individuals, they pasteurize them. Um, and these are typically reserved for medically fragile infants. So this would be babies in the NICU. Um, some hospitals have donor milk available to all their babies. I was at a hospital just last night. Um, and that hospital had donor milk available. This baby was born at just before 37 weeks, and he was SGA or small for gestational age. His so he's in blood sugar protocol. His first blood sugars were low. So the they offered either formula or um donor milk. And so this hospital had donor milk. The couple um I was working with, they chose the donor milk, which I think is ideal in every situation. Um, so that's kind of more formal. Um, but there is a lot of milk available in the world, which is kind of interesting. Um, so milk sharing is not new, right? The context around it, the ideas are a little bit different. Um, and it is something to consider, you know, there's medical conditions of parents, of babies, there's medications perhaps. Um, we might have preterm or vulnerable babies that are, oh gosh, like human milk is ideal for those premis and those microprimis to like for their gut biology um and their gut biome to be as safe as possible. Um so and sometimes that the formula is not very well tolerated by by those tiny babies that are preterm infants, of course. Um, so there are some obvious benefits. The human milk components has the antibodies, even if it's not like mom to baby, um, the antibodies in human milk and the enzymes we can't recreate. So those are pretty awesome. The digestive tolerance is way better in human milk. Um, and for some people that just aligns better with their feeding goals for their baby, even if they're not able to meet their feeding goals. Um, so breast milk definitely has its benefits and formula does as well, right? Like both of these are life-sustaining foods here. So um, so we do have options available to us. So a couple situations um I want to chat about with milk sharing. I had a um a client recently that had a lactation client that had a huge oversupply of milk. Like one of our visits was just purely learning how to label, store, manage, rotate um milk. Like she had to buy a new freezer for her milk. So I I did kind of flag her in my mind. I'm like, I'm gonna keep her in mind, just in a case that I have people in the future who need milk because I have clients on the opposite end of that where they don't have quite enough milk. Um, and I talked to her about it. I said, Hey, would you ever be willing to donate some milk for someone? And she said yes. So I had a situation coming up a couple months later. A mom who was kind of an older mom. She was in her mid-40s having her first baby. Um, she, due to circumstances beyond her control, her baby was breached, and she tried everything to turn the baby in, she'd be needing to have a cesarean. So I knew that, and I knew that milk um breastfeeding was incredibly, incredibly important to her. Um, so given this situation, we know that um with a C-section without labor before it, then milk supply is delayed. It can come in a day or two later. And I knew that it was important for her. So I preemptively talked to my client with an oversupply and said, Hey, can I borrow just a little bit of milk? Um, well, not borrow, half. Can I have a little bit of milk? And she gave probably 30 ounces. She's like, absolutely for sure. And I had this particular mom in mind. So had the milk in my freezer with this particular other client in mind having the planned cesarean. But everything was really great with her. So she ended up having a good milk supply before day, four or five. Um, she's doing really well. That baby has never had, that baby is a few months old now, has never had anything but breast milk. So that's mom's supply came in. And I was just concerned for the first few days. I wasn't concerned overall supply. Actually, I'm seeing her um this week again for a check-in visit. She's doing phenomenal. So I had this extra milk, and I kind of like to just have some milk hanging around just in case when things come up. So another situation came up, kind of an emergent situation one weekend, um, where someone called, someone called a friend, and they were kind of in tears and kind of desperate, and that friend called me, and she's like, Hey, can you see somebody like today? Um, so I went and saw this particular mom. And um, this was not her first baby. She had breastfed really well, really successfully a couple of times before. But this particular baby, I think we were getting on to about three weeks, and um, he was losing weight, and the mom had not had supply issues before. She didn't feel like she had supply issues now. But this particular baby was he had a weak suck, always had a weak suck, didn't remove milk very well. So going into that, I asked her um before I even met her. Um, I said, Hey, don't know how you feel about this, but I do have um some. I don't know what your supply is like if you have an extra. She's like, I just used all my little bit of extra stash. I said, Well, I do have some milk if you would like it. And she was like, Oh my gosh, yes, I would love that. Um, so I took some of the milk in my freezer from my client who donated, took it to her because her extra stash um had had been used up by her baby. And so we worked with a plan with her how to get get back on her feet with supply. And yeah, this baby, totally different story, but he's got some um challenges with sucking. He does not remove milk from a bottle, from the breast, like not very well at all. So she's working on boosting her supply in the meantime. We had this little bit of milk to bridge her over, and I still have some milk um in my freezer. So there are sometimes it's very short-term reasons to share milk. Another client I had, she is one of the hardest working clients I think I've ever had in lactation. And um, when I I saw her several times, when I first saw her, her nipples were just torn up. She winced at the thought of breastfeeding. Um, but human milk, like breast milk, was so incredibly important to her as well. Um, that just aligned with her goals and she couldn't bear the thought of doing anything else. So her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law had a baby not long before her, and that was who where she got her shared milk from. Um, and she used a lot of shared milk from her sister-in-law and worked for a long time. I want to say, like, gosh, probably nearly three months, until she um, it gradually got better, until she was a full supplier for her baby. But she had a really great donor, someone she trusted who had plenty of milk. Um, so her baby, even though it took a long time to get to her for her supply to come up and for her baby to be at her breast, um, that baby got human milk the whole time, which is super awesome as well. So that was in for her situation, very easy within there. Um, there are, maybe, you know, and I as I talk to people in their breastfeeding journeys, um, sometimes I just plant a seed. I'll teach breastfeeding classes at some of the hospitals in our area or do private preparation for people. And sometimes just planting that seed, the idea that, hey, you know, if you know anyone in your life, a neighbor, a relative who has possibly has milk that you could use with your upcupping and situation, kind of plan ahead of time and and think in your mind if that's something that you would like to do. Um, another situation I worked with a few years ago, um, a sad situation, and and there's a lot of stories out there. Like milk sharing stories are pretty awesome, I think. Um, where we had a client of mine, a birth client, and the mom had a pulmonary pulmonary embolism when the baby was nine days old and the mom died. Super, super sad. Um, and this dad, oh my gosh, what um what a sweet man. And as after he kind of got his life back together, he said, you know what? Um, there was me and another doula involved, and I I did help them with lactation as well in those nine days after as she was pumping for her baby. Um, he said, I would still like to fulfill her goal of providing milk, um, breast milk for for our baby for at least a year. So helped him find some resources, which we'll talk about in just a moment, where he got donut milk not just for a year, but for 18 months. So that baby got human milk for a long time. And his story was incredibly touching. Um, and uh he used uh multiple sources for milk sharing there. Um, some like I reached out to some clients, lactation clients I was working with at the time. Um, and I got, you know, 1,500 ounces from some people, 24 ounces from other people. And as I would meet up with him, he lived about, he lived about 45 minutes away from me. But we would meet up um at a hospital I worked at. We'd meet up there, and you know what I learned and gained a huge appreciation for was milk transportation, keeping milk frozen, whether I was getting milk from people, whether I was taking milk to people during that time as I was kind of involved with that. Um, you gotta think ahead. Like, think ahead of what you know. I always carried a cooler around in my car. I'd be ready to pick up ice at a gas station at any time and would have to make a pretty quick exchange sometimes. And and the people I worked with, I'm like, all right, bring a cooler, bring it on ice, um, just for safe, safe handling and um and transportation of milk. But it was kind of tricky. Like we had to time things just right many, many times. Um, so that was a really cool story about how milk was provided for a baby who needed it and couldn't get it any other way. Um, another recently, another it's incidence I worked with, um I was working in a hospital and there was a couple who was who'd come from out of state. They were adopting a baby. Um, and the mom knew the adoption was coming up, so she initiated um, she'd never been pregnant herself, but initiated lactation for herself, which you can do. Takes time, takes hormones, takes dedicated pumping. Um, so she'd been working on that for a few months, and she was up to about four ounces a day of output, which was incredible. And so I helped her in the hospital latch her baby. Baby did really well. Milk was coming out, it was phenomenal, but we kind of figured her supply wouldn't be 100%. Um, so she um also reached out to the community and supplemented what she was making for her adopted baby um from community members so her baby could have breast milk. So there's a lot of cool reasons. Sometimes they're very short, temporary, sometimes they're long term. Um, but there's a lot of cool reasons and the people would want to do milk sharing. So two organizations I want to touch on that do this. One is human milk for human babies, the other is Eats on Feats. So these are national organizations with regional, um, kind of regional chapters. They are most easily found on Facebook. So they're Facebook groups um that you can look to join. So that's Human Milk for Human Babies, Eats on Feats. Both of these organizations started out small and grew over the last um 15 or so years. Um, so people can go onto these sites and and there are a few rules, of course, involved. Um, one is no money can take exchange plate. You know, we can where this isn't a buying-selling situation. Um, and also those donating um need to be open to um health and storage and you know, some collection questions. So kind of you have to vet your own sources. So if you were to be using milk from someone who's donating, you'd want you, you're welcome to go to their house, make sure they, you know, don't have 30 cats and um or whatever the case might be so that you feel comfortable with that. Um, and so those organizations I love. I mean I'm in a couple of those groups and I totally enjoy watching those stories. Um, some people are like, hey, I have a freezer full of milk, I'm never gonna use it, it expires in four months. Does anybody need it? Other stories are like, hey, you know, we um are a surrogate family or an adoptive family or I have twins or whatever the case might be. Um so it's pretty, pretty cool. And I just like people to know that that's out there. So a couple things, you know, risks, of course, people like, oh, that's weird, that's gross, why would we use other people's milk? Um, that may be a line of thought for some people, but clarity kind of is what matters most. The transmission, you know, of disease and infection we know are incredibly rare. But if someone has like HIV or hepatitis, you definitely want to know about that. Um, most medications and supplements and herbs are fine in breast milk. Um, very rarely are there medications that someone, like a donor, would be on that you would not want to use that person's milk. Um, so looking up some resources and and asking them, you know, what medications are you on? Um, same thing with um alcohol, nicotine, substance abuse or substance exposure. Um, are going to be questions that you can ask to somebody who you may be interested in being a donor for milk. And then, of course, the um storage, you know, are are they storing it safely? Are they labeling it? Are they how's the milk handling and the pumping as far as like the cleanliness of that? So this does require some informed consent for sure, and some transparency. So um definitely do a little bit of homework there. Um, and and you can talk about the health history, any recent illnesses. Some people will have pretty specific rec you know, rec requirements, requests, I guess. Um, like we want uh a vegan, if there's vegan milk out there, we want that, or we want a no-vaccine milk or all vaccine milk. Like there's lots of different um requests people can make about that, which is kind of interesting. Um, so so yeah, that I just kind of want to let people know that this is out there, it's a thing. Um, and and and doulas and birth workers can help guide people, lactation consultants, um, to this resource. Um and again, I it's great when people can start out with family and friends and then kind of move beyond that if needed. I had a situation, gosh, a long time ago, probably about 16 years ago, um, where I was asked to donate milk to a baby, and I had a child at the time who was lactating. Um, and so I got the opportunity to go rent a pump. I'd never really had to pump in my personal life, um, but I I rented, well, the person who asked for the milk rented a pump. So I went and got fit for a pump and I was able to do that daily dedication of pumping. Um, it was interesting to see how that changed, like the supply change, when I pumped, how much I pumped. Um, and over the course of summer was able to donate, I think like 120 ounces or so to a child who who requested and needed it for some health concerns in their life. So milk sharing, it's a concept, it's an old concept, it's been around a long time. Um, it's something you could consider, like something to have in your back pocket. I really always do like to have a little milk in my freezer just in case someone I'm working with needs it. Hopefully, this information has been a little bit helpful to you. Um, and hopefully if you need it or if you talk to somebody who needs it, you can kind of share that with them. That there are resources out there with even not within your immediate community. There are resources in the broader community, um, which is a really great, I think a really great demonstration of community. It's pretty awesome. Hopefully you find what you need and wish you the very best journey on feeding your baby or providing milk for someone else's baby. Thanks for being with us here today on the Ordinary Deal Podcast. This is Angie Rosier, your host, signing off. And as always, please reach out today, make a connection with someone. Um, someone you haven't seen for a while, um, someone you've lost touch with. Um, just make that human connection. That'll be good for you and good for them. Thanks for being with us, and we'll hope to see you next time.

SPEAKER_00: 21:50

Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.