Eve Lieberum died on her third day of life. But before her death, her mother Abbie Lieberum was able to give the newborn some of her milk.
Eve was born with trisomy 18, a rare and often fatal genetic condition that caused a hole in her heart. Being able to provide her daughter with milk during those precious few days helped Lieberum cope with the loss.
“That was one of the few things that made her birth, made her, like any other baby,” said Lieberum, a social worker who lives in Westmoreland County.
Lieberum continued pumping for months after Eve’s funeral and donated that milk to help other babies.
Her donations were handled by Mid-Atlantic Mothers’ Milk Bank in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. The nonprofit, which feeds babies in the commonwealth and Maryland, New Jersey, and West Virginia, is one of 29 accredited banks across the U.S. that provides donor breast milk to families for whom breastfeeding is not possible.
This includes some parents of premature babies, who might have difficulty lactating for reasons such as perinatal complications like preeclampsia, or a lack of skin-to-skin contact with their newborn. That’s concerning because the nutrients in breast milk cannot be replicated in infant formula.
Denise O’Connor, the Pittsburgh milk bank’s co-founder and executive director, described donor milk as “a simple intervention that can have such a profound impact on the health and survival of medically fragile babies.”
The CDC says that babies who are breastfed have better health outcomes, including lower rates of asthma, ear infections, and sudden infant death syndrome. But when a parent can’t lactate, leading health agencies recommend that donor milk be given to infants with very low birth weights.
A major concern for premature infants, especially those born before 28 weeks, is the higher risk of developing necrotizing enterocolitis, a condition that occurs when the lining of the intestine becomes inflamed. In severe cases, a hole develops and bacteria leaks through, leading to serious abdominal infections, and potentially death.
But numerous studies have shown that donor milk can protect against this serious illness. One published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that extremely premature infants who were fed donor milk had less than half the rate of necrotizing enterocolitis compared to babies who were fed formula.
Some infants just don’t tolerate formula well, said Lisa Houlihan, the chief nursing officer at the Children’s Home of Pittsburgh, a specialty hospital that serves kids with medically complex health needs. If a patient has belly pain that disrupts their sleep, she said, that stymies their growth.
The Mid-Atlantic Mothers’ Milk Bank is slated to process some 400,000 ounces of donations this year, said O’Connor. She estimates that 70% of the milk stays in Pennsylvania, while the rest goes to babies outside the state.
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—Sarah Boden, for Spotlight PA
