Editor's Note: This article previously appeared in the Milk Bank's April 2013 E-Newsletter.
Since mid-March of this year, the Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas has established new relationships with nine different hospitals located in Texas and six additional states. In the last six weeks, each one of these hospitals began ordering donor human milk from our Milk Bank.
Sometimes new hospitals begin prescribing donor human milk when an infant’s family requests it for their child. Such was the case with one mother of an infant who was in a hospital NICU that didn’t yet prescribe donor human milk. This mother called us and asked for donor human milk for her baby that was in the NICU. After working with hospital staff to both gauge the interest and finalize the needed paperwork, a doctor at that hospital wrote the hospital’s first-ever prescription for donor human milk. We then promptly shipped out processed milk to the baby in need.
The calls came from NICUs at hospitals in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Each one of our new hospital partners was complementary regarding our nutritional analysis capabilities and ability to dispense the pasteurized donor human milk according each baby’s individual needs.