Breastfeeding advocacy group Best for Babes is sponsoring their first Mother’s Day Miracle Milk™ Stroll, with over 50 locations throughout the US and Canada. On Saturday May 10, 2014, thousands of parents, friends, family and community members will gather in parks and malls across the U.S. and Canada to raise funds and awareness for human milk to help save the lives of 500 premature infants that die annually from Necrotizing Enterocolitis (NEC) – and help prevent 5000 babies each year from contracting this often deadly and painful disease.
“Our goal with this event is to create a nationwide consumer-driven platform to raise awareness, funds and milk donations to help make human and donor milk the standard of care in NICUs everywhere to help reduce suffering and deaths” says Best for Babes Co-Founder Danielle Rigg. “Human Milk Saves Lives. We don’t really need more science. What we need are more solutions to help more moms get more Miracle Milk™ to more premature, sick and fragile babies.”
Feeding fragile and compromised babies human milk – whether from the mother or by donor -- has been shown to reduce the risk of NEC by 79%. NEC is an excruciating bowel inflammation that can require multiple surgeries to remove dead tissue, may result in organ failure, months- long neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) stays, and can cost between $200,000 to over $1,000,000 to treat. Lifelong complications and treatment may also ensue. The anguish it causes parents is indescribable.
In its most recent policy statement on breastfeeding and human milk, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states unequivocally that “the potent benefits of human milk are such that all preterm infants should receive human milk… If mother’s own milk is unavailable despite significant lactation support, pasteurized donor milk should be used.” PEDIATRICS Vol. 129 No. 3 March 1, 2012, pp. e827 - e841.
Proceeds benefit Best for Babes and its partners NECSociety, Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA), Reaching our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE), and the United States Lactation Consultant Association (USLCA), and will be used to fund education for parents, health care providers, medical directors and hospital administrators about the critical role of human milk and donor milk in a premature, fragile or compromised infant’s diet. The event is being generously sponsored by PJ's Comfort breast pump maker Limerick and MotherLove Herbal Company.