I've heard Paula Meier talk about creamatocrits at a lactation conference I
attended.

In the NICU, premature babies often need higher calories than a term baby
does.  Having a higher caloric concentration allows the baby to get more
calories in less volume (most can't tolerate the volumes they would need to
receive the higher calories in normal expressed breast milk).  Because of
this caloric need, most milk is fortified with powdered formula or human
milk fortifier.  Paula's work with creamatocrits allow mothers to test their
own milk and give their babies the part of their milk that contains more
calories and lipids, thereby eliminating or reducing the need to use
artificial or cow milk based fortifiers.

I know I haven't really answered your questions, but I hope this helps a
little.  Some of us have seen over and over and over again that when human
milk fortifier is added to expressed breast milk, many infants often develop
bloody stools and signs of necrotizing enterocolitis.  When these infants go
back to plain breast milk, their bloody stools often stop altogether.  But
as soon as their milk is fortified again, the bloody stools start again.  I
don't know if there is actual research to back this up, but as nursery
nurses, we see it happen all the time and it's difficult not to make a
connection between the two.

You can see more about creamatocrits here:

http://www.nature.com/jp/journal/v22/n8/abs/7210825a.html

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1552-6909.2000.tb02046.x

Christina Harris, RN
Seattle, WA

On 6/15/07, heather wrote:
>
> ...But human milk from human mothers? The creamatocrit is interesting
> for use in research, perhaps, but I just don't understand its
> application as a clinical tool

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