You can donate through mom-to-mom milk sharing sites such as Human Milk 4 Human Babies Hawaii and Eats on Feets Hawaii. If you donate through these sites, please state which island and area you are located.
a) We recognize that mom-to-mom milk sharing is cultural and common in Hawaii. We are sharing that this is fresh, refrigerated or frozen breast milk. It is not tested or pasteurized and has the possibility of transmitting viruses and bacteria. We recommend that you follow informed milk sharing guidelines to reduce risk to your baby, and we do not recommend mom-to-mom milk sharing for premature or medically fragile infants.
b) Mom-to-mom milk sharing is different from purchasing human milk on the internet. In general with milk sharing, the most a mom donating her milk will ask for is replacement milk bags. There is not an incentive for a mom donating her milk to create more product vs when someone is selling human milk. We do not recommend purchasing human milk from the internet; if you desire to purchase human milk for your baby, we recommend getting a prescription from your pediatrician and purchasing it from a non-profit milk bank, such as Mothers' Milk Bank of San Jose.
i) There was a study of purchased human milk from the internet rather than a milk bank demonstrating 74% of samples having harmful bacteria and 21% of purchased milk having cytomegalovirus.
ii) There was a study demonstrating that 10% of purchased human milk from the internet rather than a milk bank had bovine DNA demonstrating that the samples had been topped off with either cow’s milk or infant formula.