In a message dated 4/5/99 10:03:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< DONOR
 BREAST MILK is the standard food for a newborn whose mother does not have
 enough colostrum/milk to satisfy volume requirements to "fix'" that sugar
 level.

 here's my bottom line on this subject: donor milk is available in the 48
 continental states of the united states, the milk bank in vancouver is NOT
 closed, and any institution that is not familiar with how to get, when to use
 it, and why to use it (this last point being the most important) is behind
 the times and needs to "update your hospital's . . . policy."
  >>

Carol -- In principle I'm with you on this one.  My question is only, in a
world in which most hospitals -- even most level 3 nicus -- don't have in
house milk banks, how quickly can a hospital in, say, NY, get donor milk for
a baby that looks hypoglycemic this minute?

I'm assuming that it comes Fed Ex, say from Boston or Denver or wherever,
meaning roughly 24 hours.   Is that right?  and if so, is that fast enough?

Or is it practical, or appropriate, for hospitals to have requested donor
milk in advance and have it essentially sitting around in the freezer waiting
for the next hypoglycemic (or etc) baby who needs it?

This isn't meant argumentatively -- I'm really asking.  Until a lot more
people know in a nitty-gritty way how to make donor milk practically
available to the moms and babies they work with it will never become the
standard of care we all wish it were.

(a few years ago I asked my MDs, midwife, pump rental station etc how I could
donate milk and was told, Sorry, there's no milk bank in NY.   I doubt any of
these folks knew, or believed, that there was a real, practical way to get
milk back and forth to some other city in a timely fashion.   We need to know
what to tell them -- and "you're wrong" isn't a fine enough level of detail
:)  ).

Elisheva Urbas
lay bf agitator in NYC

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