When a baby is born, a mother’s breast milk helps the child grow safe and healthy. But many new moms have trouble breastfeeding their newborns.
A newly opened dispensary at HSHS St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in O’Fallon, Illinois, is offering donated milk to families in the Metro East who need breast milk for their babies.
The hospital opened the dispensary after a lactation nurse found many of her patients were having trouble breastfeeding but didn’t know where to find donor milk in the region, said Amanda Schaefer, the manager of the hospital’s women and infants center.
“To my knowledge, from when you cross over into Illinois from Missouri, and then all the way up until Carbondale, there’s not a dispensary,” she said. “So this is a very wide range of people that we can reach.”
Children’s health advocates and medical experts — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — recommend newborns consume breast milk for the first six months of life. Breast milk is associated with health benefits, including lower rates of certain infections.
But some mothers either can’t breastfeed or don’t create enough milk for their babies, Schaefer said. Others need a few days to get the hang of breastfeeding before they can nurse on