The Breast Milk Market is Disgusting
When I became pregnant, I had every intention to be able to feed my baby breast milk. I did all the research, followed everyone's advice, and prepared for birth. When I had my son, for the whole first month I spent hours and hours trying to make it work, but my milk never came in and I was devastated.
Still wanting my child to have breastmilk, I turned to a friend who was over producing and was able to feed him on her donor milk for three months. Then out of nowhere, she started to dry up, and I had to look for donor milk elsewhere.
As a side note, some blood banks are now taking breast milk donations as well so if you are in desperate need and your baby is an NICU baby and very newborn, you should be able to get your milk from a donor bank. Where my baby was healthier, we would have been charged over $5 an oz and that just wasn't sustainable.
Anyway, at first I was able to find a few donors that provided us with a half month or so of milk - but to do this, I had to post in groups, turn alert on, and basically be on FB consistently to catch milk - otherwise I would be snatched up within a small window of time. The same people would claim the milk over and over again to where others in the groups barely got a chance to respond. This was so stressful and for most of these, I had to drive over an hour to pick up the milk.
Then I moved states away and began heavily researching where I could find more donor milk, and I was shocked at everything I found. In short, on Craigslist women are selling gallons of breast milk to body builders marketed as "growth milk" for hundreds of dollars. Women are making jewelry or soap out of their breast milk and selling it for over fifty dollars. I even found on two occasions women selling their milk as a sexual fetish. The frustration I felt could not be named. Here I was, a struggling mother working a full time job and trying to find food for my child, while other women had more than enough to share and were selling it to the highest bidder.
Let me first say, I understand what it takes to make breast milk so I know the effort that goes into pumping and everything so yes, I'm not mad that money is being charged for the milk. I am mad because I am in groups specific for donor milk and every day, the stipulations to get the milk I need for my child are getting higher and higher to where I still haven't been able to get him milk since we moved.
One person posted on FB marketplace said they had 2000 oz of milk in their freezer and to message for pricing. The posting had been up for over a month so I reached out and asked for what I needed only. I was sent a pricing chart and told the milk was "organic" so the price per oz would be $10. For my monthly need, that would have been $5,000 -which is absolutely absurd.
Another person posted that they needed to clean out their freezer and had 700 oz. Again the post had no traction for over a month and no price was listed. I reached out and asked if they were willing to donate any. I was met with absolute rudeness and basically told "I don't want to go back to work so I'm using my milk to make money and if you don't have money, go on then." That person was selling theirs for $20 per 6 oz bag.
I've had people that don't want to drive, people that have all these crazy rules about meeting up, and it has literally become so hard to find the milk to begin with that is willingly being donated that I am feeling like giving up. My son is awful on formula and it makes him sick regardless of how we do it - but the options we have are limited. I came into the community of mothers here with hope everyone would be kind and sharing and yet, all I've found is just another way people have found to divide. I never would have thought finding milk was going to be an issue, but now I know.
