Donating breast milk also nourishes mom
Kara Dulin was 6 1⁄ 2 months pregnant when her baby stopped moving. At the hospital, she remembers the doctors squinting hard at the ultrasound screen before they delivered the devastating news: There was no heartbeat.
“I screamed. I just had a complete break with reality,” Dulin said. “I was hysterical. It was such a trauma, such a shock to the body. I didn’t know what to make of anything.”
But five months after suffering through the stillbirth of her daughter Evalina Grace, Dulin has given other struggling babies a way to thrive. The Andover resident is part of a group of bereaved mothers who have chosen to donate their breast milk, giving their babies — whose lives ended before they could begin — a legacy.
“Evalina was never able to take a breath or accomplish anything on Earth, but her milk went to other babies who were extremely premature,” said Dulin, 42. “It was a way of saying, ‘She did matter.’ ”
The demand for donated milk has increased in recent years, since the American Academy of Pediatrics announced in 2012 that breast milk was preferable to formula when nursing premature babies to health, said Dr. Mandy Brown Belfort, attending neonatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Specifically, it protects against necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal disease common among premature babies which can be fatal. And many mothers who give birth preterm can have problems with milk production, she said.
“It protects against serious complications related to being preterm,” Belfort said. “NICUs have become more interested in using donor milk, and there are more milk banks, not just here in New England but across the country.”
There are 26 milk banks in North America. Mothers Milk Bank Northeast in Newton opened in August 2011.
“We do get bereaved moms who have had, unfortunately, full-term losses and stillbirths,” said Naomi Bar-Yam, executive director of the Newton milk bank. “It’s the last connection to the baby. I think, for them, it’s really a part of the healing process and gives some meaning to their baby’s short life.”
Since it opened, the nonprofit has gotten 3,349 donors, she said, and hospitals pay $4 per ounce. An ounce is about three feeds for a premature baby.
Over a three-month period, Dulin pumped every hour and a half when her body was still working to feed the daughter who never came. She donated about 140 ounces of her breast milk.
Dulin had three miscarriages before her now 4-year-old daughter Ella was born, and Evalina — the result of an IVF cycle — was a last attempt to have a family of four.
The milk donation process helped her mourn an especially isolating kind of loss, she said, allowing her to connect with a baby she loved but never knew.
She would sit up pumping by herself in the middle of the night, her husband, Scott, and Ella sound asleep. It felt like her special time with Evalina.
“When your child dies it’s as if they’re somewhere out there, but you cannot reach them,” Dulin said. “When I was pumping, Evalina was there. I felt like she was right there with me.”