Feeding Thousands of Babies, One Donation at a Time

Monday, 11/6/2017

Producing a plentiful amount of breastmilk is nothing new to Mandy. After the birth of her oldest child, now 4, she never stopped lactating. “Even two years after I stopped pumping, I was still making milk,” she said. “I only stopped producing when I got pregnant again!”

When her second son, Jeremiah, was born, Mandy already had a lot of knowledge surrounding breastfeeding and breastmilk. Despite all her experience, round 2 of breastfeeding came with its own set of challenges. Jeremiah had acid reflux as a newborn and needed special modifications to his diet, which required Mandy to pump and feed him with a bottle. The reflux went away, but Jeremiah only wanted breastmilk from the bottle, so Mandy became an exclusive pumper.

A friend soon realized how much milk Mandy had stored in her freezer, and suggested she look into donating it to Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas. She completed the screening process and began dropping off her donations twice a week at her local depot,Arlington Green Oaks WIC Clinic. Now 19 months into her donor experience, she’s donated more than 41,000 ounces of breastmilk to medically fragile babies.

Mandy sees her abundance of breastmilk as a gift. “I believe that God has chosen me to be an overproducer so that I can bless so many fragile babies,” she said.

For the smallest of infants, one ounce of milk can provide up to three feedings. That means Mandy’s fed babies in need approximately 123,000 times.

“To know that I am feeding so many babies in addition to my own is a true blessing,” she said.

To learn more about donating milk, click here.