By Katie Scarvey
kscarvey@salisburypost.com
Blake Evans says her friends will probably be surprised to see her featured in a story about breast milk donation.
“I’m a very private person,” she explains.
But the Salisbury mom feels so strongly about getting the word out about a worthy cause that she’s willing to give up a little privacy.
Last Tuesday, Blake filled a large cooler with about 1,000 ounces of frozen breast milk.
“My freezer is full,” she said. “I don’t have any room to put any more milk anywhere.”
The milk was packaged in plastic bags, frozen flat, each containing five or six ounces. That’s more than 15 gallons of milk ó well over 100 pounds.
Blake and her husband Linn have three children: two daughters, Emerson, 5, and Leighton, 3; and a son, Griffin, 4 months, who was “a huge surprise blessing,” Blake says. That’s because he was born almost one year to the day after she underwent brain surgery at Carolinas Medical Center to remove a large arachnoid cyst.
Blake has a heart for children not only as a mother but as an attorney advocate in the Guardian ad Litem Program in Rowan County, representing abused and neglected children.
And now, her concern for children extends to the babies who will benefit from her breast milk.
When Blake was pregnant, she remembers hearing her friend Trisha Proper telling her about an Oprah episode she’d seen that featured an organization that ships donated breast milk to Africa.
Blake ó who has nursed all three of her children and who describes herself as a big milk producer ó was intrigued, so she did a Google search and found information about the International Breast Milk Project.
The project was started by Minnesota mom Jill Youse. Aware of the nutritional value of breast milk, Youse was inspired by a desire not to waste her own surplus milk.
Working with Prolacta Bioscience, the International Breast Milk Project is a non-profit organization that helps mothers in this country donate breast milkósome of which is then pasteurized, packed in dry ice and shipped to infants in South Africa who are affected by HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Twenty-five percent of the milk collected by the organization goes to Africa. The remaining 75 percent is processed by Prolacta to make pasteurized human milk and to create the only available human milk fortifier made from human milk for premature and critically ill babies in neonatal intensive care units in the U.S. For every ounce that remains in the U.S., Prolacta donates $1 to the International Breast Milk Project, which helps fund local healthcare initiatives in Africa.
In order to participate in the program, Blake had to go through an approval process that took about six weeks.
She began by filling out an online questionnaire about her baby’s health and her own ó the same sort of information that is required to donate blood, she said. Griffin’s pediatrician and her doctor also provided information.
Blake had to undergo blood testing, designed to screen for diseases like hepatitis or HIV ó “anything that could be communicable through breast milk.” That wasn’t difficult, Blake says, because the organization sent someone to her home to do the testing.
Blake also provided a DNA swab so the group can set up a DNA profile for her. They randomly test milk samples to make sure that the milk is coming from approved donors.
The application process, Blake says, “wasn’t taxing at all.”
The minimum donation is 100 ounces of milk. Donors can make multiple donations if they want.
The organization sends the donor all supplies needed to ship the milk by overnight delivery to the processing center in California. They will even supply donors with breast pumps.
Milk can be stored frozen for up to 10 months from expression.
Another option for mothers who wish to donate milk is the Mother’s Milk Bank at WakeMed in Raleigh, one of nine public milk banks in the country. The bank supplies milk to neonatal intensive care nurseries in the major Triangle hospitals, including those at Duke and UNC Chapel Hill.
Blake chose the International Breast Milk Project because she felt strongly about getting some milk to Africa.
There are a lot of women out there who end up throwing away frozen supplies of breast milk after they wean their children, Blake says, and she wants to encourage them to consider donating it instead.
Having nursed three children, Blake says she knows the “wonderful benefits” of breastfeeding.”
“I’m thrilled that I can donate,” she says.
For information about donating to the International Breast Milk Project, go to www.breastmilkproject.org.
For information about WakeMed’s Mother’s Milk Bank, go to wakemed.org and find the link to “care and services.”