The following is a clip in two parts of a 60 Minutes Australia report on Attachment Parenting. A transcript of the report can be found on Australia’s 60 Minutes transcript page.

A warning about the video before you play it: it does contain images of children (the eldest five) nursing on their mother’s exposed breasts. If this sort of thing offends you (it doesn’t offend me), please don’t watch it.

The video cuts off during a quote by Dr. John Irvine, child psychologist, but picks right up where he leaves off in the second part.

Continuation of the clip:

I’ve watched this clip about three times now, and what I noticed is that there are many glaring inaccuracies. For starters, Attachment Parenting is definitely about having a strong parent-child bond, but it does NOT mean that you are disallowed from using pacifiers, cribs, diapers, vibrating baby chairs (”Neglect-O-Matics,” as one AP mom called them in the video), baby bottles, or other tools to aid you in raising your child. It is often preferable that these items are not used most of the time, but if you need to use them to maintain your sanity, or to keep your marriage from falling apart, or to not feel so touched-out or burned-out, then as an Attachment Parent (or any other type of parent), you should use them. One of the eight defining principles of Attachment Parenting is “Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life.” If you need to take a shower and the baby is happy to sit in a bouncy chair outside the shower stall for ten minutes while you take care of your personal hygiene, then using a “Neglect-O-Matic” is perfectly reasonable. Some people shower/bathe with their babies, and that is also perfectly reasonable, but not everybody feels that they can keep their baby safe in the shower with them. Likewise, as a breastfeeding mother, if you’re burned out on breastfeeding after two years (or seven years, or three months, whatever), part of “taking care of yourself” means that you can say “no” to your child. It is not a requirement of Attachment Parenting to be obliged to breastfeed if it’s taking its toll on you psychologically, mentally, physically, or in any other way.

Another obvious error in reporting was when the reporter claimed that Attachment Parenting meant “no discipline.” This is completely untrue. Attachment Parenting professes practicing Positive Discipline. Positive discipline means addressing the needs of the child and conscientiously teaching and learning with the child the best way to interact with the world and others. It takes a lot of patience, dedication, and self-discipline on behalf of the parent, but the work put into raising one’s child to be a responsible adult is certainly worth it. I loved the quote of the Aussie mum, Janet Fraser, who said, “…I’m caretaking a future adult.” Brilliant! Yes! Exactly! She also had another quote which was great, “You can’t force a child to breastfeed.” Truer words were never spoken. I know that all-too-well from my own breastfeeding experience with my daughter.

The reporter did raise some good questions, but I feel her slant against Attachment Parenting and all things even remotely AP was pretty negative. I also felt like Dr. John Irvine, the child psychologist, was not even-handed in his assessment of Attachment Parenting. He seems to be confusing Attachment Parenting with permissiveness, which is not accurate. He vaguely refers to having seen “the kids” in his office — He says, “I’ve got the evidence here in the clinic. I see the kids,” but what kids? What percentage of the kids he sees are being raised truly AP and what percent are being raised punitively or permissively? I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of the kids he sees are being raised traditionally, with a lot of punitive discipline and neglect.

On a personal note:

PapaBear, my husband (about to turn 30 years old next month), was raised by very progressive parents. His mother, a psychotherapist, breastfed him until he was almost five and his father quit his job when he was a baby to take care of him until he was four. During the day, his father spent every waking moment with him, building a geodesic dome and letting him experiment with his power tools whenever he wanted. At night, his mother would come home from work and breastfeed him. They all occasionally co-slept. His parents believed in positive discipline, and never used corporal punishment to discipline him, not once. Though his parents divorced and remarried other people, they still treated him as the most important person in their lives. He is now an exceptionally well-adjusted, mature, and compassionate adult of superb intelligence. The way they raised him didn’t have a name yet, but nowadays it would be called Attachment Parenting. FWIW, I believe Attachment Parenting works. My husband is living proof of it.

Now that you’ve read Part I and Part II, you should know all about cloth wipes, diaper pails, and how to wash dirty diapers and wipes.

Part III is about the cloth diapers themselves. When most people think of cloth diapers, they think of large white cotton rectangles which need to be folded and then pinned onto the baby and then covered by plastic pants.

I’ve been cloth diapering my baby for over ten months, and I’ve never used pins. There are safer and easier options for fastening diapers onto the baby now, so I have no desire nor inclination to learn how to use pins. I know a lot of people who cloth diaper that like using them, and I have a lot of respect for those people, but personally, I don’t like the idea of sharp metal objects near my baby.

For those of you who are used to the convenience of disposable diapers but would like to start using cloth for your baby, fear not. There are cloth diapers that are made to be as easy to use as disposables are. They’re called all-in-ones, or AIOs. Sometimes, they’re called pocket all-in-ones, or pocket AIOs. Here are two examples:

I’ve pictured two views: inside and outside, to give you a better idea of what these types of diapers look like. The two pictured here are called Happy Heinys, and they can be found pretty much anywhere online where cloth diapers are sold. I bought mine at Full Circle Baby, a WAHM-owned diaper shop here in Texas.

The great thing about pocket AIOs is that these diapers don’t need plastic pants or diaper covers at all. The waterproof layer is already built into the diaper. That’s why they’re called “all-in-one”s. Happy Heinys are called pocket diapers because they have a pocket which you need to stuff an absorbent cloth into before putting the diaper on the baby. The pocket design was invented to shorten drying time in the dryer. If you use pocket diapers, you need to remember to take the absorbent cloth out of the pocket before you put the dirty pocket diaper and absorbent cloth into the diaper pail. This is a picture of a (clean) pocket diaper already stuffed with an absorbent cloth:

You can use any absorbent cloth, even a shop towel if you want to be thrifty. It won’t hurt anything, though some people claim it’ll increase pilling in the fleece layer (the white part) of pocket diapers. I stuffed the above diaper with a prefold diaper.

What’s a “prefold diaper?” This:

It’s a rectangular diaper made of several layers of absorbent cotton twill folded and sewn together so that the middle layer is thicker than the two side layers. Some people use prefold diapers with a fastener called a Snappi to diaper their babies. Other people use pins to fasten their prefolds. While I don’t have any experience with pins, I have used Snappis. They’re relatively easy to use, but I prefer the ease of Aplix (think: Velcro but much higher quality) and snaps, so most of the time I used fitted cloth diapers or pocket AIOs.

What’s a fitted cloth diaper? A fitted cloth diaper is a diaper with its own fasteners (usually snaps or Aplix) that is contoured and has elastic sewn in the legs and back (and sometimes the front) so that it fits the baby well and doesn’t let any poop explosions out. It does, however, need a cover over it to keep the baby’s clothes (and your own) from getting soggy. Here’s a picture of a fitted diaper:

The above diaper is a Kissaluvs size 0. The upper limit for weight on that diaper is officially 15 pounds, but my almost eleven month old is 20 pounds and they still fit her (on the loosest snap). They are the only diapers we own that we’ve used on her since she was born. Here she is wearing one:

We only wear them around the house for two reasons: (1) they’re not absorbent enough for leaving the house, and (2) I like to be able to know when she is wet immediately so that I can change her diaper as soon as she goes. For this, I put a fitted diaper on her without a diaper cover. This way I can tell she’s wet as soon as she goes, and I change her right then. Often when she’s wearing a cover or pocket AIO (and especially if she’s wearing a disposable, which we have done for travel on an airplane), it’s harder to tell when she’s wet. I’ve made a conscious effort since she was born to try and preserve her innate feeling of cleanliness and dryness by changing her as soon as she becomes wet or dirty so that potty training will be easier for all of us when it’s time.

(If you’re about to tell me about Elimination Communication and how great it’s been for you, please comment with your story. I would love to read it. Know, though, that I’ve researched it thoroughly, tried it and it did not work out for me. I’ve had to pump continuously with a very low supply since the baby was born and I just could not devote the time I wanted to to EC. I did get her to pee in the potty once, after a nap, when she was about six months old, but after that I haven’t had a repeat.)

Stay tuned for Part IV: Leaving the house with cloth diapers

While I’m getting Part III of the Cloth Diapering Tutorial ready, I thought I’d provide you with a commercial break.  It’s (sort of) about breastfeeding. 

Now that you’ve read part I of the cloth diaper tutorial, you’re familiar with cloth wipes and diaper pails. Now you’re ready for the part people dread the most about cloth diapers: washing.

A lot of people like to soak their diapers and then wash. Others, lazy like me, wash them twice. It uses the same amount of water as soaking-then-washing and almost the same amount of electricity (the difference is negligible), but it has the added benefit of agitation thrown in. I like to wash the first time in cold water to help reduce staining and wash away all the solid matter (translation: poop). The second wash is done hot to get the diapers really clean. You don’t want to do both washes with hot water because hot water on poopy diapers may set the stains in.

Let’s begin. Washing cloth diapers is actually very easy. Ideally, you wouldn’t wait until your diaper pail looks like this:

However, even if it does, it’s still no problem to wash them. Just take the liner out of the diaper pail and carry it over to the washing machine you’ll be washing the diapers in.

Open the washing machine and dump the dirty diapers into it like so:

Notice how my hands don’t touch a single diaper. Once the bag is empty, turn it inside out (again, you can do this without ever touching the yucky inside part) and throw it in the wash as well:

Now, add the detergent. I recommend using a detergent that has no colors or fragrance added and that is preferably vegetable-based. One detergent I’ve been using for years which fits all these characteristics is Seventh Generation Free & Clear. I’ve also used Ecover (even though it has a slight fragrance), Charlie’s Soap, Oxy-Prime, Allen’s Naturally, and Method free and clear. My favorite for diapers is Allen’s Naturally. My second favorite would have to be a tie between Seventh Generation Free and Clear and Ecover (even though some people don’t recommend Ecover for diapers, I’ve found it to be quite effective). Allen’s Naturally is expensive and can be a hassle to find (though it is worth the money), but Seventh Generation Free & Clear and Ecover can be locally bought, which makes them more convenient and affordable. I do not recommend: Oxy-Prime (super-expensive, the company that sells it surprises you with very costly shipping after you enter your credit card information, and the product is nothing to write home about either), Charlie’s Soap (has a weird natural gas smell to it once you put it in the wash which is a little alarming), nor Method free and clear (leaves a residue and diapers don’t feel clean after washing). This site has detergent recommendations but I followed some of those recommendations (like crappy Oxy-Prime, which comes highly recommended on the pinstripes and polka dots site) and found them not to my liking, which makes me think that maybe the ratings do not work out for everyone the same way. The site does mention that “Even from the recommended detergents all of the detergents may not be compatible with your water or washing routine,” so the ratings do take these possible differences into account. Overall, though, it’s an excellent diaper detergent rating site (the only one I know of), so it’s definitely worth a look.

Anyway, for our tutorial, I’m using Seventh Generation Free and Clear. I don’t use the recommended amount. I only use about half of a capful, sometimes even less:

The detergent goes in along with a dash of baking soda, say, 1/4 cup (you don’t need to measure it; just pour a bit in). Do not use bleach. It is not necessary for getting diapers clean and over time it will break down the fibers in your diapers. Set the water temperature to “cold” and the wash cycle to “regular.” Close the lid and start the machine.

After the cold cycle is done, run another regular wash, but this time, switch the water temperature to “hot.” Both times the diapers are washing, you can be doing all kinds of other things. It’s just like washing anything else in your washing machine.

When the diapers are finished with their second wash, remove the Bummis bag from the washing machine and hang it up to dry (I accidentally dried one in the dryer once and had it come out fine, but the washing recommendations are to hang it up to dry). Transfer the clean wet diapers to your dryer or line-dry them. The time for drying in the dryer varies. Experiment and find what works for you. Sometimes if you put in a load of washed diapers into the dryer with some clean dry towels, it speeds up the drying process. Line-drying in the sun is free and may help reduce or eliminate stains.

Important note:

Some people are understandably squeamish about putting poopy diapers in their washing machine, but here’s the key thing to remember: it’s a washing machine. It washes not only the diapers but itself in the process. It’s not like you pull out clean diapers when it’s done and find that the inside of your washing machine has been smeared with feces. Look, I’ll show you:

This photo was taken immediately after finishing a diaper wash. The rust stains and the spilled baking soda notwithstanding, the inside of my washing machine is as pristine as yours.

Cloth Diaper Tutorial, Part III.

I use cloth diapers on my baby. I often encounter people who are interested in using cloth for their babies but for some reason feel intimidated by it, so they continue with disposables. I created this picture tutorial to help those unfamiliar with cloth diapers to see that they are really very easy.

With either disposable or cloth diapers, you will have to clean the baby’s butt when it’s poopy. No getting around that. Disposable diapers don’t make that problem go away, so in that regard, disposables and cloth are almost identical. It’s important to point that out because a lot of people would have you think differently, like cloth is somehow more gross and involved and that disposables are more hygienic and sanitary. Don’t fall for the marketing hype created by Proctor & Gamble (maker of Pampers and Luvs) and perpetuated by Kimberly-Clark (maker of Huggies). Like paper plates and plastic utensils, it’s nice to have them available sometimes, but why use them every day when the real thing is so much better?

First item on the tutorial agenda: wipes.

Most, if not all, disposable wipes contain water as the main ingredient, and then a bunch of other ingredients intended as preservatives so that mold doesn’t grow on the moist wipes, maybe some moisturizing agents (like aloe vera or aloe vera plus some other junk you can’t really pronounce), surfactants for a soapy feel, and other questionable ingredients to help convince you that you “need” the disposable ones. (Hint: you don’t need them.)

There’s nothing magical about disposable wipes. They don’t disinfect the diaper area (that might do more harm than good, actually). They don’t clean any better than a washcloth would (their flimsy paper makes a messier clean-up job and uses up more disposable wipes than if you were to just use cloth). Also, and this is most important of all, disposable wipes leave a chemical residue on your baby’s sensitive skin. This residue could cause allergies, exacerbate skin conditions like eczema, and exposes the baby to chemicals that may cause problems in the future. For something that’s supposed to get you clean, disposable wipes don’t seem to do a very good job of it.

Cloth wipes, however, can get your baby truly clean without any questionable chemicals. You can use baby wash cloths, regular wash cloths, flannel cut up into large squares, old-fashioned flatfold diapers… Just about anything you can think of to wipe off a baby butt with can be used as a cloth wipe. And water. That’s right, plain old water. Some moms like to use a little natural soap mixed with water on one cloth wipe and then do a wipe-rinse with water on another wipe before drying the baby off and putting a fresh diaper on, but plain old water on a cloth wipe will do the trick just as well. Here are some examples of cloth wipes:

The above cloth wipes have been used for dozens of poopy diaper changes, yet none of them are stained or dirty. I never use bleach to wash my diapers or wipes either. The photo is unretouched. The little spot you see to the right of the blue washcloth is a piece of stubborn lint, which you can find in pretty much anything made of cloth you already own.

Okay, so how do you clean a baby’s butt with a cloth wipe? The same way you do with a disposable one, except that when you’re done, you throw the cloth wipe along with the dirty diaper in the diaper pail and not in the garbage.

What is a diaper pail? Here is one of those scary, intimidating terms that gets some people running for the hills. I’m going to break it down in a way that will hopefully demystify the term forever: a diaper pail is simply any container where you put your dirty diapers and wipes in. A lot of people find that a regular garbage can with a step-on lid works really, really well as a diaper pail. Like this one:

The above step-on garbage can cost about $30 at Wal-Mart. It’s stainless steel, but you can use a cheaper plastic one as well.

It is important to line your diaper pail, the same way you would line your garbage can with a plastic bag, lest you throw your dirty diapers directly into the can and create a whole lotta mess for yourself. I like to line mine with a washable Bummis bag. I own two of them. That way one can be in the pail while the other is in the wash. I do not recommend using a disposable plastic garbage bag for this as it is very flimsy and would actually make things harder (and possibly more expensive) in the long run. However, if you choose to use disposable plastic bags to line your diaper pail while using cloth diapers instead of disposables, it’s probably still a lot less wasteful than if you were to use disposables.

(There are two types of diaper pails: dry and wet. I prefer, use, and recommend the dry. A dry diaper pail is essentially just a container to hold the dirty diapers. Period. A wet pail is a container into which you’ve put a small amount of water and maybe baking soda or vinegar (but not both together because they’ll react with each other and create salt and water). I do not recommend using a wet pail because it creates a drowning danger for small children, plus it may break down the fibers in your cloth diapers before their time.)

We made the error of buying Bummis bags that were too short for our diaper pail, so we had to improvise and place a platform inside the pail to support the bag so that it wouldn’t fall in with the weight of the diapers. You may not have to do this if you buy the right size bag for your pail, but I’ll show you a picture of what the inside of our diaper pail looks like anyway just in case you make the same mistake. For our platform we used a big block of styrofoam we would have otherwise thrown away. It was part of the packaging from something we bought, so it’s what we had. We’re keeping it out of the landfill for now, so it’s recycling at its best:

This is what the diaper pail looks like with a Bummis liner in place:

Now it is ready to receive the poopiest, smelliest diapers and cloth wipes any baby could ever produce. As long as the lid is closed, you can’t smell anything. No perfumes, bleach, disinfectant sprays, Febreze (the bane of my existence), dryer sheets, deodorizing tablets or sprays are necessary, though many companies would have you think otherwise. Just a simple step-lid garbage can with a washable Bummis bag is all you need to get started in your cloth diaper endeavor.

Cloth Diaper Tutorial, Part II.

It seems that this subject is one that I cannot stop blogging about. There is still so much to say. It bugs me that the National Milk Bank sells every single ounce of donated breast milk they receive to Prolacta Bioscience (I’m not even sure the National Milk Bank wasn’t created by Prolacta; maybe it was! Update: apparently it was.) Yes, all the milk goes to “help treat babies in the NICUs,” but only if someone can foot the bill for it, and the price is very steep ($6.25/milliliter, or $184.83/ounce). Milk from non-profit milk banks also goes to “help treat babies in the NICUs,” and for far less money (around $3.25/ounce). The same stringent quality control and the same outcomes for patients who receive breast milk come from non-profit milk banks as from for-profit ones, with the only difference being that everyone can benefit from non-profit milk banks. The same cannot be said for for-profit ones.

Considering that none of the donors are getting compensated for their trouble and that they’re not even being told the whole story of what happens to their milk when they donate to the National Milk Bank or the International Breast Milk Project, you could say I’m a little ticked off about the whole thing.

Would it bother me as much if the donors were compensated and made aware of how much of a profit would be made? Maybe not, but that scenario is unlikely to happen. Actually, it still would bother me, because Prolacta’s product is so egregiously overpriced for a product that’s marketed “for the nutritional needs of premature and critically ill infants” that it seems almost criminal. Speaking of which, for me to find out the asking price of Prolacta’s human milk fortifier took some substantial investigating. It’s not like they list prices on their website. Many articles and and blogs mistakenly report the price to be around $35-40/ounce, which is only an average taken after you’ve added in your own pumped breast milk to their human milk fortifier. The actual price is $6.25 per milliliter, or $184.83 per ounce. It’s supposed to be a secret, so…. Tell everyone you know, especially anyone considering donating to the National Milk Bank, The International Breast Milk Project, and Prolacta Bioscience. If word gets out about their prices and what’s really happening to the milk that comes into their hands, their supply will drop in a hurry, forcing them to revise their business practices.

Want to donate your milk to a place where it will actually do some good? Find the non-profit milk bank closest to you.

Or donate your milk directly to a mom in your neck of the woods.

Before I continue with this, I need to point out that when I say “non-profit” milk banks, I mean all milk banks that are members of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America.  When I say “for-profit” milk banks, I’m referring to The International Breast Milk Project,  the National Milk Bank, and any other milk bank or organization that serves a for-profit company.  Although The National Milk Bank and International Breast Milk Project are technically non-profit entities, they both serve Prolacta Bioscience, a for-profit company specializing in processing and selling a product made out of donated human milk.

Non-Profit Milk Banks

For-Profit Milk Banks

Overall, I’d say that while it’s great that research is conducted a lot more quickly with for-profit milk banks, non-profit milk banks are better for society overall. Obviously anyone working for Prolacta Bioscience, the National Milk Bank, or the International Breast Milk Project would disagree with this assessment, but you’d probably be hard-pressed to find anyone outside these contrived organizations who’d say for-profit milk banks are a good idea for the majority of babies.

I touched on this a little bit in yesterday’s post, but I feel like it needs a little more fleshing out. Milk banks, regardless of for- or non-profit status, collect, pasteurize, and distribute milk to needy babies throughout the country. No matter what kind of bank the milk is dispensed from, it is very pricey. Even non-profit milk banks charge upwards of $3.25/ounce to cover processing fees. (That’s about $12 for a four-ounce baby bottle, and how many of those does your baby gulp down in a day?)

The National Milk Bank, which calls itself non-profit, sells the milk it gets from generous, unsuspecting donors to Prolacta Bioscience. Prolacta Bioscience then sells the donated breast milk at an undisclosed amount for a profit. The company claims that it doesn’t sell the milk by the ounce, like non-profit milk banks do, that the price “depends on the gestational age and size of the neonate.” Some digging around revealed that all of that is true. They don’t sell their products by the ounce, they sell it by the milliliter, which, for anyone that’s ever taken a science course, is a lot less than an ounce. The price? $6.25 per milliliter. This makes the price per ounce more like $184.83.

$184.83. Per. Ounce.

This isn’t a fair comparison, however. Prolacta’s product is not usually used full-strength; it needs to be mixed with human milk, with the cheapest possible scenario being 20% Prolacta human milk fortifier mixed with 80% mother’s pumped milk. For a theoretical 3-pound baby in the NICU:

• Assume a 3 lb NICU preemie gets fed a total of six ounces of milk a day (a conservative estimate)
• Supplement the mother’s milk 80/20 with Prolacta human milk fortifier (80% breast milk, 20% Prolacta human milk fortifier)
• 80% of 6 ounces = 4.8 ounces mother’s milk
• 20% of 6 ounces = 1.2 ounces Prolacta human milk fortifier
• Cost for 1.2 ounces Prolacta human milk fortifier = ($184.83/ounce X 1.2 ounces) = $221.80
• Over $200 for ONE DAY, assuming the baby doesn’t drink more than six ounces.

By contrast, if the same 3 lb NICU preemie were to get fed a total of six ounces of milk per day from a non-profit milk bank capable of providing 24 calorie/ounce milk (Mother’s Milk Bank of Austin is one of those, as are many others), it would cost $3.25/ounce X 6 ounces = $19.50. Probably most middle-class parents would be able to afford that out of their own pockets, but even if they couldn’t, a non-profit milk bank would make sure any infant that needed it would receive it anyway. There is no such guarantee from a for-profit company like Prolacta.

So let’s recap. For equivalent products and circumstances (3 lb preemie consuming only 6 oz breast milk per day):

This, by the way, is a fair comparison. Food for thought.

I’ve given this a lot of thought. The International Breast Milk Project is a project that sends breast milk to feed starving HIV+ orphans in South Africa. It was founded by Jill Youse, a lactating mother who had gallons of surplus breast milk she’d pumped for her daughter. She wanted to do something good with the milk, so she found an orphanage in South Africa called iThemba Lethu which houses children with HIV/Aids, got some money together for shipping, and started donating her breast milk to them. She told her friends and family and they chipped in to help. This was in April of 2006. Now the International Breast Milk Project hopes to donate thousands of ounces every year to needy HIV positive African orphans. Sounds really good, right?

However.

There are details I’ve become aware of (this blogger helped uncover some facts and effected enough change to get straighter answers out of IBMP’s FAQ page) and other things I’ve thought of since first reading about it that have given me pause.

It costs a lot of money to ship, well, anything, to Africa from the USA. Shipping milk is especially expensive because it is so heavy and because a fairly large amount gets consumed by each baby very quickly (about a liter per day per baby). One woman and her family and friends alone wasn’t going to cut it. From everything I’ve read, she turned to non-profit milk banks for help processing the milk (pasteurizing, testing, re-freezing, shipping, etc.) and they refused, probably because processing and shipping the milk is so expensive, and because there are so many needy babies right here in the USA that could use donor breast milk. Also, they just don’t have the monetary resources for such an endeavor.

Since the non-profit milk banks couldn’t help her (probably too much red tape for such a project anyway), she sought help elsewhere. Prolacta Bioscience, a for-profit milk processing entity, offered to process the milk for free. With the support of Prolacta, now the project could get underway. Somehow Oprah found out about what was happening (I wonder how…Was this the plan from the beginning? Donate to Africa so that Oprah would want to showcase the project?), and Jill Youse’s efforts were recognized on her show.

Then the Oprah effect took place: suddenly Prolacta…, I mean, The International Breast Milk Project, was literally flooded with breast milk donations. It’s estimated that over 50,000 ounces of breast milk were donated, with the intent that it would all go to needy HIV-positive orphaned African babies.

All of that donated milk, according to the International Breast Milk Project website, ended up being donated to Africa. But after May 31, 2007, only 25% of what is donated to the International Breast Milk Project goes to Africa. The other 75% of donated breast milk goes straight to Prolacta Bioscience, who then resells for a profit it to NICUs here in the USA as human milk fortifier.

On the IBMP’s FAQ page, it states that Prolacta does not sell human milk fortifier by the ounce, so it’s hard to get a price for it. I called up a local NICU here in Texas and tried to find out what the price for Prolacta Bioscience was. I was told, “I’m very sorry but I’m not allowed to give out that information.” I asked, “What kind of information?” The clerk’s answer, “Any information.” Huh? I’m pretty sure asking about the price of human milk fortifiers used by the hospital doesn’t violate any HIPAA regulations, but whatever. Maybe their legal team advised them not to divulge anything out of fear of being sued. Typical.

Undeterred, I then phoned a pediatrician friend of mine who’s done quite a bit of work in NICUs. He told me that for some preemies who are fed breast milk, sometimes fortifiers (bovine milk-based) are added to the breast milk to boost its calories. He said the two biggest manufacturers of breast milk fortifiers are Similac and Enfamil. He also mentioned that Similac and Enfamil donate large amounts of their products (formula and fortifiers) to hospitals, so that’s usually what the hospitals use when fortifiers are called for. He had never heard of Prolacta Bioscience.

After talking to him, I was even more confused. What’s better, to have two powerful formula companies maintain control over the nation’s (the world’s?) hospitals, thereby standing in the way of baby-friendly initiatives and perpetuating the bottle-feeding culture? Or is it better to allow Prolacta Bioscience to take advantage of the charity of generous lactating mothers in order to try and take over the human-milk-fortifier market? Ye-gads, I’m not sure there’s an easy answer to any of this.

I never found out what the price of the human milk fortifier Prolacta sells was, but I’ll keep looking.

Something struck me, though, as I was perusing the FAQ page for the International Breast Milk Project. It mentioned that for the 75% of donated milk that Prolacta gets to keep, Prolacta pays the International Breast Milk Project $1 per ounce. (The money gets used by the IBMP to fund breast milk banks in Africa, which is in the long-run a lot more cost-effective than shipping milk from the USA to Africa.) What occurred to me as I was reading this was, why doesn’t Prolacta pay the donors $1/ounce? Wouldn’t it be a lot cleaner for them, image-wise? They wouldn’t have to hide behind a charity to try to legitimize their business this way. Just be up-front and tell women, “We’ll give you $1 for every ounce of breast milk you donate to our company.” Prolacta already sets up all prospective donors with a free hospital-grade pump, at-home blood testing, free shipping for the milk, DNA testing for the milk received and each mother who donates (to make sure what they’re donating is actually human milk and not cow milk poured into Lansinoh bags, among other safeguards). Prolacta is already paying $1 for every ounce received from the International Breast Milk Project. Why not give it directly to the women who donate? It seems more fair that way; they’re the ones doing all the hard work. Perhaps they should keep both options open: one for the women who would like some of their milk and efforts go to help African orphans, and the other for women who need the extra cash. This could be a win-win, with a little tweaking (like maybe making 100% of what’s donated to the IBMP go to Africa, for example). Perhaps if a member of Prolacta’s executive team gets wind of this idea, maybe it’ll come to fruition.

Another item of interest: my pediatrician friend went over the information provided by Prolacta for the human milk fortifier made from 100% human milk. He said it seemed like the osmolality of their human milk fortifier was a little high to be safe. Translation: the concentrated human milk seems a little too concentrated, which could potentially cause problems like dehydration or renal failure or worse, like depletion of the free water in the baby’s blood causing really bad things like swelling of the brain and brain damage. (Makes me wonder how safe the formula-company-made milk fortifiers are…) He also noted that there weren’t any clinical trials of Prolacta’s product in use that he could find, which further made him suspicious of recommending it for any of his patients. Hmmm… Seems like this human milk fortifier made out of 100% human milk, while it sounds like a great idea to the uninitiated, might need a few more years of research.

Important note: Although what I’ve written may make it sound like I don’t agree with the International Breast Milk Project, I have to admit that even 25% of what’s donated to the IBMP going to Africa is still better than 0%. Without Jill Youse’s idea, ZERO babies in Africa would be benefiting from this. I’m not blogging about all this to give Jill Youse a hard time. I think her original idea of sending breast milk to Africa is a commendable one. I do think it’s important to bring up these questions, though, especially for those who would want to become donors to the project.

Personally, if I had a large stash of milk to donate, I’d probably find someone right here in my hometown, a local mom, who could use it for her baby. It’s a lot more cost-effective, I’d know exactly where my donation was going, and while it’s admirable to look out for babies halfway around the world, there are babies right here who need breast milk too. I know first-hand the heartache of not being able to provide all the breast milk my baby needs, and I also know the profound, down-on-my-knees gratitude I’ve felt at receiving donated milk for my daughter. To ease even one mother’s suffering – I don’t think I’d be able to pass up that opportunity.

To donate breast milk locally: http://milkshare.birthingforlife.com/. Milkshare is an online service that can hook up women who need breast milk for their babies with those who have a surplus of it. Please read up on the risks and benefits of receiving raw breast milk on the MilkShare site before signing up as a recipient. (Breast milk donors can sign up free, but breast milk recipients must pay $15 for the service – an absolute bargain, if you ask me.)