Darby Beranek's deep freeze overflows with tiny packets of magic elixir, grouped in larger zip-close bags. At first she was elated by how quickly her stash multiplied. But she only has one freezer, and she only has one baby.

Shortly after Beranek's first child was born in February, she discovered her body makes more milk than her daughter, Lucinda, could possibly drink. She quickly stored enough to return part time to her job as a pharmacist, and soon her husband couldn't fit so much as a steak into the freezer. But Beranek just couldn't throw breast milk in the garbage.

"Everyone calls it liquid gold," she said.

A lactation consultant at the Baptist Health Expressly for You Store recommended she donate to a breast milk bank. Two milk depots have opened in Arkansas -- one at Baptist and a second at the Van Buren County breast-feeding Resource Center in Clinton.

The depots ship donated milk to Mothers' Milk Bank of North Texas in Fort Worth, one of 16 nonprofit donor human milk banks in North America. The milk is processed in Fort Worth and dispensed to hospitals around the country.

After a brief medical history and panel of blood tests, it was easy for Beranek: pump, bag, freeze and drop the milk off at the depot.

"I literally put it in a Kroger bag with my name and donor number," Beranek said.

Women have been sharing milk for centuries, from wet nurses in ancient Rome to the friend of a friend with an extra bottle. Mothers who donate to the depots in Arkansas can be sure their milk will flow where it's needed most: to premature infants who can't ingest anything else.

Breast milk is "just like blood," said Jessica Donahue, a registered nurse and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant with the Expressly for You Store. "People are asked all the time to donate blood and save lives. People who are breast-feeding can donate breast milk and save the lives of infants ..."

...

Donated milk arrives in Texas, bagged and frozen in temperature-controlled boxes.

In the lab, Mothers' Milk technicians thaw the milk and pool donations from three to 10 mothers into groups. Each group is submerged in a water bath, gradually heated to 62.5 degrees Celsius (144.5 degrees F), held there for 30 minutes, then tested for bacteria.

Mothers' Milk uses the gentlest of pasteurization processes, the Holder method, which changes the nutritional content slightly. After pasteurization, levels of immunoglobulins A and G, which are antibodies thought to convey some of a mother's immune protection to her baby, decrease by 67 percent to 100 percent of the original amounts, according to Shaina Starks, Mothers' Milk production manager.

The levels of fat, protein and vitamins A, D and E are unchanged. Those macronutrients are impossible to duplicate in a commercial formula and can mean the difference between life and death for a premature newborn.

Last year, Mothers' Milk dispensed 415,000 ounces of pasteurized milk to 85 hospitals in 11 states, and demand from the medical field keeps expanding, Executive Director Amy Vickers said.

"When we started, it was like only the elitist best used donor milk," Vickers said. "Now it's a standard of care."

Arkansas Children's Hospital has been buying donor milk for its neonatal intensive care unit since 2010. Donor milk is the NICU's first line of defense against life-threatening infections in premature infants, according to Sumar Morrison, a registered nurse and board-certified lactation consultant at the hospital.

The NICU staff members anxiously watch premature newborns for signs of necrotizing enterocolitis, a deadly condition that strips healthy tissue from an infant's already fragile intestines. Nationally, 10 percent to 12 percent of premature newborns develop this condition.

But a study conducted at Children's Hospital found that on a diet of breast milk, only 2.5 percent of preemies will develop the condition.

At any given time, the NICU is feeding 10 to 15 babies with donor milk. For whatever reason, illness or stress, some mothers are unable to provide breast milk, but the infants' premature guts can't efficiently absorb anything else.

"Donor milk is very easily digested," Morrison said. "Formula digestion time is much longer. These are little tiny preemies, and cow or soy [milks] are just not human."

Children's Hospital buys between 200 and 400 bottles from Mothers' Milk per month, said Tina Fleming, a registered nurse and certified lactation consultant. It's not cheap at $13.75 per 100 milliliter bottle, but the $66,000 annual expense for donor milk is still well below the estimated $200,000 it will cost the hospital to treat one case of necrotizing enterocolitis that requires surgery, Fleming said.

...

A Google search -- "donate breast milk" -- turns up plenty of options with straightforward names. "Only the Breast" and "Human Milk 4 Human Babies" promise community connections through social media and location-based listings, for those looking to buy, sell and donate breast milk. "Moms share your treasure!" the accompanying ads scream.

Breast milk's flawless nutritional profile continues gaining attention, especially since the American Academy of Pediatrics published a study and consequent policy statement in February 2012 instructing all able mothers to breast-feed for one year or longer.

"Given the documented short- and long-term medical and neurodevelopmental advantages of breast-feeding, infant nutrition should be considered a public health issue and not only a lifestyle choice," the authors conclude.

So the virtual breast milk market teems with overproducers looking to sell or donate, healthy full-term mothers who have milk shortages and a handful of adult drinkers insisting it's not a fetish.

"Milk sharing is a vital tradition that has been taken from us, and it is crucial that we regain trust in ourselves, our neighbors, and in our fellow women," Human Milk 4 Human Babies' main website banner says.

But trust is hard to come by when a study published in the American Journal of Pediatrics in October 2013, "Microbial Contamination of Human Milk Purchased Via the Internet," found samples from popular milk-sharing websites contaminated with harmful bacteria, including staphylococcus, streptococcus and, in some cases, salmonella.

Without donor screening and pasteurization through a milk bank, casually donated milk might do more harm than good, Vickers said.

"A lot of moms share with friends or sell on the Internet. We don't say anything bad about those moms. Everybody has [the] right to find out about [the] risk and make [a] choice," Vickers said.

"But when you donate to a nonprofit milk bank, you make sure babies who need it the most -- the sickest babies -- will get it."

...

Last spring, Angela Green, an occupational therapist at Baptist Health, miscarried during her third trimester. She was heartbroken; she was devastated. But most of all, she was confused. How could this happen when her two older children were active and healthy? She dreaded delivery, knowing she'd meet a baby she'd never take home.

Her body, however, wasn't confused. It continued producing perfect nutrition for the child it had been growing. Green delivered her daughter, Suzy, and spent the whole day rocking her body, praying, and saying goodbye. The next day Green's milk came in.

She had a choice, a lactation consultant at Baptist Health said: Let the milk dry up on its own, or donate. She chose to give, and for the next several months pumped a freezer full to donate to the milk bank.

"The first time I pumped it was very emotional," Green said. "I kept thinking, 'This milk should be for Suzy.'"

But her husband supported her, and when co-workers questioned the clunky pump bag she dragged to work, Green was able to explain. She grieves for her daughter every day, but by donating her breast milk, she feels reassured that she's sparing other parents from feeling that pain.

"Knowing that Suzy's milk was going to be given to preterm babies who needed it to survive helped me in the healing process," she said. "It was a way I would remember Suzy and help other families. I know there are moms and dads out there who are sitting in their baby's hospital room feeling grateful for the milk that other moms have provided."

Family on 07/16/2014