Meet mum who donates 18 pints of breast milk every week
Record-breaker determined to help premature babies
SITTING with her three children gathered around her, she looks any other proud mum.
Yet Charmaine Lacock has another remarkable claim to fame.
For she routinely achieves an amazing feat by donating 18 pints of breast milk – every week.
The 38-year-old Glasgow mother became a milk donor after the birth of her youngest daughter this year.
She decided to collect the surplus her baby did not need and give it to Scotland’s only breast milk bank based at Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Children.
In a move that would make many women wince, she now spends up to six hours a day expressing milk using a pump.
The donations are frozen then delivered to the bank, which distributes it to babies in need.
Miss Lacock is so generous in her donations that the milk bank believe she deserves recognition and is writing to the Guinness Book of Records to have her accepted as a record breaker.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the official record for donating breast milk is 16 pints a week – which Miss Lacock has already surpassed.
Last night Debbie Barnett, the Donor Milk Bank Co-ordinator, said: ‘Charmaine is an exceptional donor. Our average donor gives us nearly 18 pints of milk in total – yet Charmaine is supplying that every week.
‘She’s already a record-breaker here and now we’re planning to apply to the Guinness Book of Records to verify her record worldwide.’
Miss Lacock, who formerly worked as a care co-ordinator, lives in Glasgow’s Knightswood with her 43-year-old partner Alfie Rawson, a health and safety assessor, and Mekayla, ten, Sarah, two, and three-month-old Paige.
When Sarah was born, Miss Lacock chose not to breastfeed directly, preferring instead to express milk to feed her.
By the time Sarah stopped feeding Miss Lacock had a freezer full of milk which she was reluctantly forced to throw out. She later read about the milk bank and was instantly interested.
And when Paige was born this year she volunteered to donate.
She said: ‘I contacted Debbie Barnett and she made it so easy. She came to the house and got everything organised.
‘Paige was a month early and was in special care for a couple of days and we saw those tiny, tiny babies who could fit in your hand, only managing to take three or four millilitres of milk at a time – I had to help.’
The Guinness Book of Records states that the holder for breast milk donation is Alyse Ogletree from Argyle, Texas, USA, who between January, 2011 and March, 2014, gave 2,762 pints to the Mother’s Milk Bank of North Texas, averaging 16 pints a week.
Miss Lacock is beating that record in terms of weekly average donations, though she has only been donating for three months, so hasn’t managed to clock up as large a total volume.
Since Paige was born, Miss Lacock has donated 207 pints of breast milk.
She expresses milk every four hours for at least an hour and also gets up at 2 am to express before Paige wakes at 3am for her night feed, which means she expresses for at least six hours a day.
The milk is frozen and then taken by one of Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity’s volunteer drivers to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, where the Royal Hospital for Sick Children is based.
Miss Lacock is quite bemused at being a record breaker but the most important thing to her is the babies and mothers she is helping. She said: ‘I’ll carry on donating for as long as I can and I’d encourage anyone else to do the same – it’s a wonderful feeling to know you’re helping.’
Nearly 4,000 babies are born prematurely in Scotland every year and breast milk is often the only thing a very sick or premature baby can tolerate.
Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity has invested more than £300,000 in the Donor Milk Bank, working with the NHS to deliver safe, screened milk to babies around the country.
‘We saw those tiny babies. I had to help’