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For everytime a healthcare professional says "Donor milk has no calories, it's just water."
A thread. 1/n
For everytime a healthcare professional says "Donor milk has no calories, it's just water."
A thread. 1/n
Let's pick through the facts - donor milk is milk that has been collected from screened milk donors, mothers with extra milk than their babies need. To become a donor to @heartsmilkbank they all undergo a long process, including checking that their baby is growing well. 2/n
Donor milk is heat treated, pasteurised, as part of the safety precautions milk banks take. Pasteurisation heats milk to 62.5°C, destroying viruses, bacteria and some components of human milk, such as the immune cells. 3/n
Water content of unpasteurised human milk is 88%. This does not increase after pasteurisation. 4/n
Calorie content of unpasteurised human milk is around 77 kcal/100 ml (on average, and this is very variable). For donor milk it is 70 kcal/100 ml (on average, and this is very variable). 5/n
For preterm babies, their metabolic rate can mean that even mother's milk needs additional energy for babies to grow, but this is controversial between units. Donor milk is also fortified in some units (but not in others), and outcomes don't seem to be different at 2 years. 6/n
But, and this is the important point, donor milk contains human milk proteins, human antibodies, human-specific antimicrobial factors, human hormones, you get the point. 7/n
As a result it does not cause an inflammatory reaction in the gut of babies, unlike formula. It may contains factors that help to protect preterm and older babies from NEC, a devestating disease that kills 100s of babies, usually in babies who don't receive maternal milk. 8/n
But parents who receive the message that donor milk is water, get a very different perspective on human milk, and the importance placed by that hospital on human milk including mothers milk, in general. 9/n
Donor milk isn't water. Milk banks in many places around the world routinely feed babies with pasteurised donor milk. They grow. You can see the growth curves: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13006-018-0185-6 10/n
And nobody ever tells parents not to feed infant formula or cow's milk, even though they are pasteurised, frozen, freeze-dried etc etc... 11/n
Please, can we stop telling parents donor milk is water. It is not true. Donor milk will never be mother's milk - it wasn't created specifically for their baby. We are working to personalise donor milk as a therapy, but right now it isn't water.
It is made for humans.
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It is made for humans.
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