'Why I'm donating 100 pints of my breast milk'

Emma's son Bert was born in November 2025 at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford with Down's syndrome and oesophageal atrisia, a birth defect which means food can't reach the stomach.

At three weeks old, he contracted sepsis. He spent 16 weeks in intensive care at Birmingham Children's Hospital, unable to drink his mother's milk.

In those difficult moments, Emma made a decision. "I sat there thinking I'm going to have a lot of milk to give away. I saw a number of mothers that really struggled to express milk. I thought, let's donate mine to other neonatal babies."

Emma has since donated more than 90 pints of breast milk to the Human Milk Bank at Birmingham Women's Hospital.

The facility is the only one of its kind in the Midlands, supplying 1,900 pints of milk in the last year to premature and sick babies across the region whose mothers are unable to breastfeed.

The milk bank recently celebrated its 75th birthday, and is urging mothers with babies under one year old to consider donating, if they find themselves with excess breast milk.

The milk bank's manager, nurse Donna Hearnden, said demand often outstrips supply, forcing them to appeal for new donors to sign up.

She described the service as "extremely vital", adding that "we have a lot of babies that are born premature, and they need breast milk. We think of it as a medicine and it can absolutely help to save their lives."

Those signing up are subject to a blood test and lifestyle questionnaire to ensure donated milk is suitable for the babies who receive it.

Emma, from near Oswestry in Shropshire, uses a pump to express milk for half an hour at a time, up to four times each day. Milk is decanted into storage bags, frozen, and then picked up by the Blood Bikes charity and taken to Birmingham.

Milk is then checked, pasteurised and stored at the Human Milk Bank until it is needed.

Dr Gemma Holder, a consultant neonatologist at Birmingham Women's Hospital, said many parents of premature or sick babies are unable to express milk, "either because they live far away, or they're not able to visit due to other commitments, or they're really sick, which is the reason the baby was born early."

She added that stress can also inhibit the production of breast milk: "By providing that donor milk, it takes the pressure off. It gives them something which is beneficial to their babies, giving them that space to allow their own milk supply to come in."

NHS England recommends giving nothing but breast milk to babies for the first six months of their life. It can reduce the baby's risk of infections, diarrhoea and vomiting, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), obesity, and even cardiovascular disease in adulthood.

Emma, who works as a senior lecturer specialising in dairy cow production, hopes to donate 100 pints of breast milk by the time Bert turns one in November, to "give something back" to the NHS, which she said was "absolutely phenomenal".

"Knowing I can help other mothers, parents and tiny babies who were in our situation is a real privilege."

Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.