Giving to others...

Today, even as I sit here sick with a cold, Zoe has a cold, and Noah is getting over one, we were able to give to another Mommy and baby something very special, and it made us all feel very good afterward.

In July, when we found out that Z had her allergies, one of my first thoughts had been, "Oh my goodness, I have a ton of pumped milk in my freezer...and she can't have any of it!" I was devastated, to say the least. If anyone has ever pumped, you know how long and how much work it is to build up a good stash. By good, I mean I had 261.5oz pumped. That's a HUGE amount, and would have had, if I didn't have to start over, over 300oz by the time school started, which was a goal of mine. This way, Zoe would have had plenty of milk if I couldn't keep up at work (it's hard to be able to find the time to pump more than 1 time at work), and she'd have plenty of milk for her cereal. But, that wasn't the case, and here we are doing what we ARE doing today (that's a different post for a different day).

So, I was pretty emotional about the whole thing with my milk. There was no way I could give it to Zoe, as it was making her sick. But, there was no way I could just DUMP it down the sink. Like I said, if you have ever pumped, you know how much that is, and how hard it is to build that much. It took up probably about half of our freezer. I stumbled upon MilkShare.org (thanks Becky) and posted that I had a one time donation for the Boston area. I had a few people email me requesting the milk (including people from out of state, which I politely declined). I wanted to see the person I was donating the milk to, and I also didn't want to go through the hassle of packing up frozen milk to mail across the country, if there was a need here in the area.

The person we went with, after much deliberation, was a woman who is in the process of adopting a little girl who is just a month older than Zoe. This little girl came from a very troubled background, and suffice it to say, needed the nutrients and magic of breastmilk. I won't go into the details, but it was heartbreaking to hear about. It was also great to meet the little girl and see how much she has been thriving in this new environment. She and Zoe seemed to click and "talk" to each other. We talked to the mother for a little bit and then emptied out the freezer with the breastmilk that Zoe can't have to give to this mom for her little girl. It was tough to see it go, knowing that my little girl can't use that milk...but looking at it every day wasn't making it any easier to keep it there, waiting for this woman to come and take the milk away. What made it easy to give to her was that she wanted the best for her daughter. It made it easy to hear about how hard of a time she had on the formula, but how HARD her mommy was working to make sure that this baby was having breastmilk, and for the length of time she wants her daughter to have it (18-24 months). That's going to be a lot of work, and I'm very happy to have been able to help that family out.

It's sad to see all of that milk gone, but it's good to know that it is going to help this little girl out and get her to be as healthy as she can be, given her circumstances. I don't know how much it'll last for her, but for Zoe, that was about a month's worth of milk (for day care only). I know the mother was grateful, and told me she'd put us on her email list for updates on her daughter.