Low Supply Threatens Babies’ Lives: Madrid Milk Bank Desperately Needs Donations

Mark Martínez rests calmly on the chest of Ana María Ruiz, his mother. He is very small, hardly takes up space. He has 16 days to live and a body of 28 weeks of gestation. His only job is to eat, eat and eat. It takes him an hour and a half to ingest 19 milliliters of milk and he takes a break for half an hour. So 12 times a day. Every gram counts to be able to survive the first challenge that life has given him: a heart problem that caused Ana María to be removed by caesarean section 14 weeks before it should have been to put a pacemaker. Mark is getting by thanks to his mother’s milk, but not his mother’s, who has been in the hospital and is barely pumping. He feeds on the production of a second mother who has decided to make an effort and donate her surplus milk after feeding her baby to save the life of another child.

All this happens in the Hospital 12 de Octubre, in the south of Madrid. There is the regional breast milk donation bank of the Community of Madrid, which is in low hours. Reserves drop every summer because the mothers go on vacation, but this year is being especially hard. They should have between 80 and 100 liters of raw milk and they have 26. A month they should enter to cover the needs between 170 and 200 liters and this July they have only 94. But the deliveries do not understand the seasons and the plant is almost complete. A total of 36 babies are struggling to go home, 15 of them from the ICU.

The bank provides service to eight other hospitals in the Community of Madrid, and the person in charge of all this is Nadia Raquel García, coordinator of the milk bank. The neonatologist’s team ensures that the mothers express their milk in the donation centers, in the hospital itself or at home in the most productive and sterile way possible. To keep the liquid well, in addition to extreme hygiene, the ally is the cold. “It is very important to freeze the milk at home and transport it in refrigerators so that the chain does not break,” explains García. To do this, they give the mothers all the necessary material: breast pumps, glass jars, a mask, a hair cap and a refrigerator.

Mothers who donate over a long period of time are the most valuable to the bank. The record is held by a mother who managed to deliver 250 liters of milk in two years. But it is not easy. 80% of the donors do it voluntarily and oblivious to what the newborns suffer, 15% have a baby admitted to the hospital and donate what is left over, and 5% are mothers who have lost their child but They decide to take advantage of the milk. Hana Muñoz belongs to 15%. Her son Bruno has been in worse shape than Mark, but he’s getting by. Of his five roommates, who are resting on their parents’ chests to receive warmth and calm, he is one of the fattest, despite the fact that he was very premature. Bruno was born at 29 weeks and five days, but weighed 860 grams because he did not receive enough nutrients through Hana’s placenta. He is 37 weeks tomorrow and weighs 2.1 kilograms. She now eats 45 milliliters every three hours.

Hana began to express milk to feed her son and send her to the hospital until they told her that there was no more room for them in the drawer reserved for Bruno. At that time, she decided to use that surplus to donate it to other children, her milk siblings. It takes at least half a liter a day. In theory, she should express milk every three hours to simulate the needs of the babies and so that production is not cut off. She does it five or six times a day. It takes 20-30 minutes each time. “It’s hard getting up between 3:00 and 5:00 to pump,” she says as she keeps an eye on her son’s monitor, which reflects her heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. This is why she does it. For helping her neighbors who cannot produce milk. “I bring a little for him and a little for the rest.”

Babies process breast milk much better than artificial milk. Proteins, fats, nutrients and immunoglobins to protect them from infections. “In children at such high risk, the frequency of intestinal communications and suffering from necrotizing enterocolitis decreases,” says García. Before reaching the children, the milk goes through many processes to ensure that it is not spoiled. To begin with, you have to pasteurize it. The laboratory has several machines to quickly heat milk up to 62.5° Celsius for half an hour. Then in another it is cooled with ice as quickly as possible. Not one minute more, not one less. The milk is analyzed to find out what nutrients and energy it contains and, in an adjoining room, freezers purr keeping the liquid between 20 and 30 degrees below zero.

Every day the necessary glass jars are taken out and sent to the hospitals that request them in special containers that maintain the cold chain, to centers such as the Hospital de La Paz, the Hospital Clínico San Carlos, the Hospital Puerta de Hierra in Majadahonda , the Príncipe de Asturias Hospital in Alcalá de Henares, the Severo Ochoa Hospital in Leganés, the Getafe University Hospital and the Alcorcón Foundation. In the bank itself, on one side of the laboratory, a technician checks the acidity of the milk that is going to be consumed in the hospital. When it becomes acidic, it is an indication that it is contaminated or that the cold chain has been broken. On the other side of the room, another technician takes the bottles of milk from the same mother and smells them before pouring them into a flask. It is another sieve. “Spoiled milk smells like tire rubber or fish. Good milk smells sweet,” says García.

In order to donate it is necessary to do a previous interview. As with donating blood, it is necessary not to have diseases such as HIV that can be transmitted through milk. In general, be in good health and produce enough to breastfeed the baby and to donate. It can be done from home with home collection service or at the Hospital de La Paz, the Severo Ochoa, the Puerta de Hierro-Majadahonda and the Príncipe de Asturias-Alcalá de Henares. “There are mothers who, even though they go on vacation, continue to donate in the Autonomous Communities to which they travel, since all the milk banks in Spain are part of the Spanish Association of Milk Banks and there is fairly fluid communication between us,” he indicates. Garcia. “We try to make it as easy as possible for mothers,” she adds. Everything for the babies to leave the hospital.

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