If a mother who is no longer staying in the hospital with her baby, but
supplying the baby with expressed milk, brings milk to the unit for her
baby, does anyone think they can easily tell who the milk came from?

I probably shouldn't even mention this, or mothers may have to face yet
another barrier to feeding their babies.  But my neighbor and her sister had
babies at the same time, and her sister's baby needed heart surgery very
early on.  My neighbor had an ample supply, unlike her sister who was
worried and not getting enough rest between kids at home and baby in
hospital a long distance from home.  The milk her sister delivered at the
hospital every week for the months the baby was hospitalized, was only half
her own.  The other half was from the baby's aunt.  The mother never said a
word, realizing that it probably would have gone over like a lead balloon.
The baby did fine, BTW.

I've mentioned it before, but I will say it again.  We don't pasteurize
banked milk here, relying instead on an extensive system of testing donors
and milk, similar to how we run blood banks.  We do pay the donors for their
milk, and we don't pay blood donors except with trinkets.  We don't have
enough banked milk for our needs, either, though we seem to manage to cover
the most vulnerable of the premature and ill babies.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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