Mothers' Milk Bank Austin

Being a mother is the best and hardest thing I have ever done.  I had a textbook perfect pregnancy until the beginning of my third trimester. I hadn’t even decorated the nursery, bought a crib, or had a baby shower, when I was hospitalized as a precaution for preeclampsia with my first baby at 29 weeks. As I started bedrest, doctors ran tests and wanted to keep me under observation and delay delivery as long as possible to give my baby every moment to grow in my womb. After a few days I became suddenly and violently ill, and my baby and I were in crisis as I became eclamptic and had a seizure. Blood tests showed my liver was shutting down. I had never heard of HELLP syndrome, a very serious pregnancy complication that can cause liver damage and cerebral hemorrhage, and can be fatal for mother and baby, but now I had it! Shocked, my husband watched the frantic race as doctors wheeled me off for an emergency C-section. Minutes later, he walked down the hall to the NICU with...

I really didn't know that donating milk was a thing until my niece was born nine weeks early. By a twist of fate, I was visiting my sister in Austin, when my niece came into the world. I live in Virginia and was pregnant myself, so it was almost like the stars had aligned for me to be there. Anyway, it was a scary situation because I felt pretty helpless; I wasn't really able to do anything for my sister and niece beyond just to visit and worry. At some point during this visit I learned of the importance of breast milk to preemies. I mean, I knew it was beneficial, but I didn't realize it was life saving. I nursed my son until he was 2.5 years old, and I had every intention of doing the same for my daughter. I decided to add donation into the mix. I tried to find a local hospital to donate the milk, but if there is a place, I had a hard time locating information about it. I contacted the Milk Bank at Austin because I knew of them from my experiences just a few months...

Donor Mom Ashley's story: I began pumping with my first (now 8) in order to finish out the school year. I was blessed with an abundance of milk and as the summer approached, I looked for something to do with our deep freeze full of milk. I was grateful to hear about the Mother’s Milk Bank and happily donated our excess right as we learned we were pregnant with baby number 2, who is now almost 7 years old! Because pumping had gone so well for the first, I pumped every morning with baby number 2 as a way to have a little extra on hand and in order to specifically donate to the babies the Milk Bank serves. The second time around brought in over 1000oz and it was so nice to be donating and helping, especially when our finances were lean and I didn’t have a lot of other ways to help people. Johnny (5), MacKenzie (8), Liam (5 months), and Keegan (almost 7) Little did I know that this pumping experience was preparing me in big ways. A short time later, we learned that baby numbe...

Just recently I was invited by a local college to participate in a project titled 100 Women, 100 Words. A project/exhibit designed to honor local women in the community who have contributed to or made an impact in the Rio Grande Valley. I soon was instructed to submit a 6x6 canvas with a painting, collage, or photograph of anything that interests me and 100 words to accompany. This gave me the perfect opportunity to reminisce about my time as a Donor Mom: I wanted a second child so badly (Samuel  1:27 ) I prayed endlessly.  I got the news we were pregnant during a regular scheduled check with my OB in December 2013.  Breastfeeding came hard with my first child. It wasn’t an easy task and soon enough the milk factory closed. The little I had saved in my freezer would soon be all gone and formula was soon introduced. I felt like a failure. But now I had a second chance. So I again took to prayer and prayed for an abundance of milk. Caleb Samuel was born...

I never planned to donate milk. I never planned to even pump. I just wanted to breastfeed my baby first and foremost, for as long as I could. Of course, life often doesn’t go to plan. When my baby was born via C-section at 37 weeks, I was allowed to see her briefly before she was moved to the NICU. Although I knew it was highly likely she would go to the NICU because she had been diagnosed via ultrasound with a birth defect of the abdominal wall, I still held out that maybe, just maybe, I would get that “golden hour” after birth of holding and breastfeeding my baby. Instead, I didn’t get to hold my baby until 12 hours after she was born, and despite the help of multiple lactation consultants in the hospital, my baby was too weak to nurse. Although 37 weeks is not considered “preemie,” the doctors described my baby as exhibiting features of a preemie. She would latch, pull back and scream in frustration, and become too tired to eat anything. It turned out she had hypotonia (low...

Saving Lives in Deep Water During the everyday hustle and bustle of life we often fail to recognize–outside of perhaps a few viral social media links or videos–the compassion and impact others have on our everyday world. However, in the aftermath of a natural disaster our awareness of acts of kindness change. Media coverage shifts from alarms of the impending disaster to stories of resilience, courage, persistence, and the overwhelming desire of many to do more for fellow humans. Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast as a Category 4 storm on August 25, 2017, dumping 40 to 60 inches of rain before moving out of the area as a tropical storm. Damage estimates are in the billions, and 77 people lost their lives. Storms do not discriminate–families and hospitals and city infrastructures were all affected by this extraordinary act of nature. “No one knows what to expect,” said Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin (MMBA) milk donor and mom, Angela Stripling. “At best you just lose power, at...

  When you make the choice to donate - go through the phone screening, fill out the paperwork, get your blood drawn, pump extra milk - you are working to save infants like, Andrew. Andrew survived a preterm birth, multiple birth defects, and a long battle in the NICU but, because of donor human milk from MMBA, was able to grow and thrive. Andrew's Mom, Anna, brings us through every step of their incredible journey. Thank you Anna for choosing to share. "At my son Andrew’s 21 week anatomy ultrasound, I was informed that he most likely had a condition called esophageal atresia (EA), which is a disconnection of the esophagus to the stomach. My doctors couldn't tell for sure if that was going on or how much of a gap in disconnection it was, but all indicators pointed toward this birth defect. It was difficult to hear the news of this, but I went ahead with every hope that it was correctable and that he would be okay. He had no apparent markers for anything else at that ...