Grey Nuns postpartum department first in Edmonton to provide donated breast milk

The Grey Nuns Community Hospital has become the first hospital in the city to offer donated human breast milk for newborns.

Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital’s postpartum department now provides donated breast milk, the first in Alberta’s capital city to do so.

The collaboration with the community bank that sources the milk, NorthernStar Mothers Milk Bank, is meant to help until a parent’s milk comes in.

Parents looking for alternatives to formula or who are unable to breastfeed right away will now be able to purchase 120 mL of breast milk for $19. Free bottles are also donated to babies in intensive care units.

“Often after birth, milk might be late to come in. Mom might be dealing with her own recovery; baby might have low blood sugars,” explained the bank’s co-executive director Donna Gersbach in a Thursday interview.

“Donor human milk is the next best thing.”

NorthernStar Mothers Milk Bank, a charitable organization based in Calgary, already provides milk to all of Alberta’s neonatal intensive care units.

The milk comes from donors across Canada. The organization is regulated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada and Alberta Health Services.

It piloted providing donor milk to a postpartum department at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre’s about three years ago.

“We saw the best response, the most outstanding uptake of this program. And so we knew that we were really onto something,” Gersbach told CTV News Edmonton.

She said Grey Nuns’ designation by the World Health Organization as a baby-friendly hospital made it “a natural fit” to be the first postpartum department in Edmonton to offer donated milk.

Shannon Anderson, a clinical nurse specialist with the Grey Nuns women’s and children health program, said donated breast milk is an increasingly popular option for its nutrient density.

“Breast milk is like blood. It has everything in it, all the antibodies and anything you might need to make a baby grow or keep them safe, keep them healthy, keep them free from infection,” she said on Thursday.

“This offers a safe opportunity for (parents) to have human milk.”

As the program started in January, NorthernStar Mothers Milk Bank is unsure how much milk it will be providing on a regular basis to Grey Nuns, but said it was prepared to provide “however much is needed.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Miriam Valdes-Carletti