A Look Back at MMBNT History

Wednesday, 3/14/2018

For local healthcare providers and parents, it’s difficult to imagine fragile infant care without donor milk from Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas. Before 2004, though, a nonprofit milk bank in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was a foreign concept - neonatologists and hospital NICUs had to order donor milk from other milk banks. By 2004, a group of child health advocates recognized donor milk was so in demand in the Metroplex that the community needed its own milk bank.

This group, led by neonatologist Dr. Susan Sward-Comunelli, worked tirelessly to establish MMBNT, which opened in the fall of 2004. The group’s top priority was to serve local babies, but they recognized that the limited number of milk banks in the United States meant that many fragile babies didn’t have as easy of access to donor milk. They committed to serving these babies if and when MMBNT’s supply allowed.

MMBNT’s first location was within Fort Worth’s Child Study Center, where it occupied a suite of offices and lab space. In 2011, the milk bank outgrew this space and moved into the current location at 600 West Magnolia Avenue in Fort Worth’s Medical District.

Since then, MMBNT has seen exponential growth. In fact, the milk bank is in the middle of a capital campaign, More Room for More Miracles, to raise funds for a new facility in southwest Fort Worth. This new facility will allow more babies than ever before to receive the miraculous gift of donor milk.