Thoughts on using donor breast milk in NICU?

[HeartNIC]

My unit is looking at starting to use donor breast milk and we need to decide on what population (

If anyone has any thoughts, advice, or opinions to share on starting a program using donor breast milk I would really appreciate hearing from you!

Thank you!

[TiffyRN, BSN, PhD]

we do a partial thaw. Let the bottle thaw just enough that the milk closest to the glass thaws and the core in the middle is still frozen.

I would worry about this, if EBM is like other frozen items I have personally experienced. The frozen core seems to be more frozen ice (water) crystals. This is just personal anecdotal experience. It would be interesting to see a nutritional analysis of different parts of "partial thaws". I believe you would have higher calories and protein in the first thaw and much less in later thaws.

I would say if one is going to use the bottle within 24 hrs, then let is completely thaw. The unit where I work allows defrosted DEBM to be used for up to 48hrs as long as nothing has been added.

Dawnebeth; not attacking you or your unit, but just asking questions. This forum is good to bring in fresh minds and fresh ideas. I have read many things here that sounded way off, then 6 months later, they are new policy where I work.

[ChristineN, BSN, RN]

Hey just wanted to say that while I do not work in NICU, I do float there occasionally and was surprised when I found out my facility uses donor breast milk. As a result it encouraged me to do a paper on donor breast milk use for my graduate program and I found some guidelines regarding it's use.

http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/live/12811/47545/47545.pdf from England

http://guidelines.gov/content.aspx?id=24107&search=donor+breast+milk from US Department of Health

[Quark09]

We use donor milk for our preemies if mom can't express milk; I don't recall anyone refusing - what I find more worrisome is the indiscriminate/informal internet milk-sharing I've seen lately. One mom here had mentioned that she was going to continue giving her baby donated milk from someone she'd met online; our ID specialist ended up speaking with her about it, but unfortunately I don't believe she changed her mind.

Our unit has seen a steady decline in NEC since DBM became the standard, which is wonderful. Ours comes in 2 oz containers and we rarely have issues with waste. We also obtain a signed consent for donor milk; we have to get them for the fortifiers too (because it was previously used without obtaining consent and we had an issue with an extremely angry mom who insisted her baby be given her milk only, without "anything artificial").