‘No need we can’t fill’
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank has outgrown its name. The facility in the Strip District is now the Mid-Atlantic Mothers’ Milk Bank, supplying donated breast milk to 20 hospitals in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.
“We’re not just for neonatal intensive care units and we’re not just for the Greater Pittsburgh area,” said executive director Denise O’Connor. “Luckily, we have the volume now to do it — there’s no need we can’t fill.”
The milk bank made its first deliveries less than two years ago, delivering donor milk almost entirely to the smallest and sickest babies at MageeWomens Hospital of UPMC and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
Although breast milk is considered beneficial for all babies, it is recommended as the “standard of care” for many babies in neonatal intensive care units, particularly for its effectiveness in preventing a dangerous stomach infection called necrotizing enterocolitis. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that one case of NEC requiring surgery or resulting in death could be prevented for every eight infants receiving breast milk instead of formula.
As word spread, the milk bank expanded its donors — mothers who undergo a blood test and screening questionnaire to give extra milk their babies don’t need — and the number of hospitals who wanted to use it.
The milk bank now has distributed 180,000 ounces of milk received from nearly 550 donors — without spending a penny on advertising for donors, as word has spread on social media and via the medical community. In August, the milk bank set up its first donation site outside of Pittsburgh, at Excela Health in North Huntingdon. It set up another donor milk depot at the Lehigh Valley Breastfeeding Center in Allentown in September, and has plans for more. Donors out of the area can also send milk, which FedEx will pick up at their homes.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has the only other milk bank in Pennsylvania but uses all of its milk in-house, so the