I'm an EP. I started pumping because I had too -- my boys were born premature. My original goal was to pump until both my boys made it home from the NICU, but one of my sons died at 5 months (his brother came home at 3 months). During that time I accumulated a chest freezer full of milk.

I've previously posted about excess lipase in the milk. Sebastien refuses to drink it; hell, I've tried it and it's disgusting. Thankfully I still produce enough to cover his daily needs. But what do I do will all that frozen milk?!

I've thought about doing a mom-to-mom donation since there are a lot of Facebook groups now that cater to that, but if my son won't drink my defrosted milk, why would any other baby? And I don't want to give another mom a ton of frozen milk only for her to find out her baby doesn't like it either.

So I'm donating it to a milk bank. These are sometimes controversial, but I don't care. These banks work with a company called Prolacta, where they pool donor milk, pasteurize it, and create human milk products for preemies or very sick babies. My own son, the one who died, received Prolacta products in the NICU at one point when my milk wasn't available for him for a few days. Donor milk is very expensive, but hospitals tend to absorb the cost rather than billing insurance, amazingly enough.

Anyway, long story short, I'm donating my frozen milk to help other babies. Donor milk helped my son, so I'm happy to be helping other babies who need it.