Take Joan Willis of Danville, Virginia. She lost over 200 ounces of frozen pumped breastmilk when a hurricane ripped through town and tore down power lines.
"I was just devastated," recalls Willis, "so many hours pumping—only to have it all go bad." Lechia Davis, a local lactation consultant suggested she file a claim under her homeowners insurance policy.
The result: a check for over $400 to compensate her for the loss. "I’d rather have the milk back," says Willis, "but in the meantime, I’m using the check to buy a generator so this never happens again."
Breastfeeding women may not associate a price with their product, but if you need to buy breastmilk, it can be quite costly. Five US milk banks currently supply over 300,000 ounces of donated, pasteurized human milk annually—primarily to babies who cannot tolerate other feedings and whose mothers have supply problems—at a cost of $3.50 per ounce for processing and shipping.
Feeding a baby on purchased donor milk for the first year would cost almost $41,000! No wonder the nickname for breastmilk has become "liquid gold."
Adapted from Michels, D., Breastmilk worth beaucoup bucks!, Mothering Magazine, 91, Nov/Dec 1998, p. 55.
Human Milk Banking Association of North America (www.hmbana.com).
Reprinted with permission from Breastfeeding at a Glance, By Dia L. Michels and Cynthia Good Mojab, M.S.with Naomi Bromberg Bar-Yam, Ph.D. Platypus Media, 2001, ISBN: 1-930775-05-9.
For more information, visit www.PlatypusMedia.com or call 1-877-PLATYPS (toll-free).