Donor spotlight: Ellen’s story

Ellen’s journey into becoming a mom took a turn when her fraternal twin boys were born early at Mount Sinai Hospital. During a difficult time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), her family received help from the Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank, which provided donor milk. This is Ellen’s story about strength, community support and helping others.

“I delivered fraternal twin boys on January 10, 2023. They were born at 35 weeks and six days. I had always planned to nurse. However, I wasn’t able to nurse as often as I wanted because the boys were in incubators in the NICU. This led me to start pumping milk, which then turned into pumping exclusively. Because I was induced, my milk took longer to come in. During our stay in the NICU, we relied solely on donor human milk. For two days, we had to supplement with formula because the boys lost more than 10 per cent of their birth weight.

“My supply eventually came in, and when we were discharged from the NICU, we were able to feed the boys my milk. At the beginning of my journey, I followed a strict schedule of pumping every three hours (other than sleeping through my middle-of-the-night pump). I stuck with it until the boys were about six months old and started solids. Of course, the more milk you remove, the more you make. I was producing more milk than the boys were drinking, which left me with a massive ‘freezer stash,’ as they like to call it. It got to the point that our chest freezer had no room for any of our frozen food. We made room in the freezer by eating the food that was there. We couldn’t have my precious milk go to waste.

“It made me reflect on when the boys were first born and how much we relied on donated milk. We would have been lost without it. I wanted to give back, so I researched milk banks in Canada and how to become a donor. I gladly completed the phone interviews, blood work and consultations. A few weeks later, I received an email saying that I had been approved to donate.

“I went from relying on donor milk in the NICU to feed my boys to donating more than 500 ounces to the Milk Bank. I am humbled to know how many babies we were able to help. Donating my milk has healed me in tremendous ways — so much so that I don’t know where I would be in my healing journey today without it.”

Donated milk is very important for families in the NICU. It helps fragile newborns during their earliest and most important days. We are very thankful for Ellen’s generosity and hard work, both as someone who received milk and later became a donor. Because of her, more vulnerable infants can get the care they need. Thank you, Ellen, for showing kindness and making a big difference in so many lives!