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Bottles of donor human milk is shown in a freezer at the milk bank at Texas Children's Hospital Pavilion for Women, 6651 Main St., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Houston.

Zoe White, senior milk bank tech, places prepared milk for transport to the cardiovascular ICU from the milk bank at Texas Children's Hospital Pavilion for Women, 6651 Main St., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Houston.

Nelly Posada, senior milk bank tech, places prepared feeding syringes in a refrigerator at the milk bank at Texas Children's Hospital Pavilion for Women, 6651 Main St., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Houston.

Zoe White, senior milk bank tech, places prepared milk for transport to the cardiovascular ICU from the milk bank at Texas Children's Hospital Pavilion for Women, 6651 Main St., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Houston.

Kristina Tucker, assistant director of Milk Bank and Lactation Services, is shown at Texas Children's Hospital, 6651 Main St., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Houston.

Nelly Posada, senior milk bank tech, prepares feeding syringes in the milk bank at Texas Children's Hospital Pavilion for Women, 6651 Main St., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Houston.

The world’s largest milk bank — Texas-based Mothers Milk Bank at Austin — dispensed more than 970,000 ounces of donated breast milk in 2021. The majority of the milk — 85 percent — goes to premature and other medically fragile babies in 181 neonatal intensive care units across the country. With some of the smallest NICU babies only able to ingest half an ounce per feeding, 2021’s donations accounted for more than a million meals.

But as demand continues to increase, that amount still isn’t enough.

“Now it’s 2022,” says Kim Updegrove, the bank’s executive director. “And we have some additional stressors: We have the knowledge that the U.S. as a developed country is almost last in breastfeeding rates. We have experienced a nationwide formula recall on top of supply chain interruptions for the formula industry; and that combination of low breastfeeding rates and difficulty getting formula has created a crisis.”

Lindsay Groff, executive director at the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, a network of 31 milk banks, including MMBA, says, “the formula crisis drove up demand nationwide by roughly 20 percent.”

Now, Groff and Updegrove are hoping supply will follow. And Houston is well positioned to help in this mission. Texas Children’s Hospital has long aided mothers of infants in the NICU become qualified to donate their excess breast milk. But this year, the hospital opened a depot, which enables any approved donor to drop off milk.

To find a milk bank near you, visit the Human Milk Banking Association of North America at hmbana.org or Mother's Milk Bank of Austin at milkbank.org . Both options are seeking donations from mothers who have given birth within the past year and have excess milk beyond what their child needs. They are also both seeking financial donations.

“Since we’ve started our depot in March, we’ve had over 40,000 ounces donated,” says Kristina Tucker, assistant director of milk bank and lactation services at Texas Children’s.

If more moms knew about the bank, Tucker thinks more would donate. And the process to become an approved donor is relatively simple.

Mothers who have given birth to a child within the last 12 months can reach out to a milk bank with local depots — such as MMBA, or others in the HMBANA network — and apply to be a donor. The process involves a couple of screening phone calls, some forms that can be completed via email and a blood test that is paid for by the bank. Altogether, the screening process can take a week or two, with about an hour or so of active work from the mother.

“We are serving the most medically fragile babies, so we need to have absolute certainty that the milk is tested, donors are screened and the milk is safe to give to these babies,” says Groff.

In the end, “65 percent of all women who want to donate their milk get approved,” Updegrove says.

My baby wasn’t gaining weight. Newborns typically lose about 10 percent of their birthweight shortly after delivery — but they’re supposed to regain it all within two weeks.

But my daughter didn’t. Couldn’t. She’d been born with tongue and lip ties that made it difficult for her to nurse, and my own physical issues made the process difficult for me as well.

When my lactation consultant told me that my daughter needed more milk than I’d been making — and now! — I nearly ran out of air amid my tears. “I feel like a failure,” I told my husband.

I wasn’t, of course. No woman who needs help feeding her child is a failure. But try telling that to a sleep-deprived mother still battling postpartum hormones.

The lactation consultant had a plan: We’d start triple-feeding — a grueling process in which feeding sessions stretch to an hour or so apiece, as moms nurse, pump and bottle feed an infant — and if that didn’t work in time, we’d turn to donor milk. Through HMBANA banks, any mom can receive up to 40 ounces of breast milk without a prescription to help them through acute need, like what I was experiencing.

I’m lucky. Between the triple feeds, oral surgery and several weeks of physical therapy for my daughter, she turned the corner in time. And I was left with a surplus of milk.

So I turned to my lactation consultant again, this time for help connecting with a milk bank as a donor. She put me in touch with MMBA, and after a couple of phone calls, a few emails and one trip for that blood test, I was approved. That was in March, more than 1,000 donated ounces ago.

I tell all of this to Updegrove, who has heard stories like mine before. That, she says, is why she and her colleagues do the work they do — “so no one ever experiences that guilt you felt, that failure you felt.”

And Houston moms could be key in this work.

“We send milk to every hospital in the Houston area with a NICU, which means almost 30 percent of all the milk we process goes to the Greater Houston area,” Updegrove says.

That’s a massive share, considering that MMBA is the world’s largest bank. But it makes sense, given the fact that Houston is a medical hub.

“You have specialty hospitals. You have a lot of babies born in remote areas that then get transferred to the Houston area,” Updegrove continues. “Almost 20 percent of the raw milk we have that is donated comes from the Houston area. Now think about that: That means that in the Houston area, in order to feed all the babies in the NICU alone requires donations from people in other areas of Texas and other states. Houston has to do a better job.”

The Houston area’s breastfeeding rate is higher than national averages: 90 percent of moms in Harris County initiate breastfeeding, compared with about 84 percent nationally .

“An urban area like the Greater Houston area ought to be producing so much milk it’s able to support the remote and urban areas of Texas and other states where the breastfeeding rate is significantly lower.”

Consider this a call to action, she says.

“Every healthy, lactating mother with an infant under the age of 1 can save a baby’s life.”

Maggie Gordon is the assistant features editor at the Houston Chronicle, where she has worked since 2015.

Before joining the Chronicle, Maggie worked at papers in Connecticut, including the Stamford Advocate and the Greenwich Time, covering a variety of beats, from general assignment and municipal coverage to education, demographics and business reporting including real estate trends and the hedge fund industry. She is a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Greatest hits include a narrative about alligator hunting in a Texas bayou, a horse trainer's quest to tame a wild mustang in one summer, and a feature about the inmates in a transgender tank for sex workers in Houston's county jail. She loves quirky characters and stories that combine adventure and humanity. Bonus points if it unearths a love story.

Got a tip for a great tale? Find her on Twitter at @MagEGordon, or send her an email at maggie.gordon@chron.com.

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