Babies who are in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Northeast Georgia Medical Center receive specialized, as well as highly-attentive, care. When babies are born weighing less than 3 pounds, we provide donor milk if needed and nutrition products made from donor milk to help those babies grow and thrive.
100% human milk-based diets help support the developing immune system and provide essential nutrients for extremely premature infants in the NICU. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends using human milk for all preterm infants.
Helping Babies Grow Strong
Breast milk helps all babies to grow healthy and strong.
- It supplies necessary nutrients in proper proportions.
- It protects against allergies, sickness and obesity.
- It protects against diseases like diabetes and cancer.
- It protects against infections, including ear infections.
- It is easily digested, and babies who receive breast milk achieve healthier weights as they grow.
What Is The Donor Milk Program?
Mothers of premature babies often can’t produce the amount of milk required for their babies to grow and thrive. You can help.
If you are a nursing mother with a milk supply above what your baby needs, you can help other babies born prematurely. You can provide potentially life-sustaining benefits to the babies fighting for their lives by donating your excess breast milk supply.
Northeast Georgia Medical Center works with Prolacta Bioscience to support moms that are interested in donating milk. Prolacta screens the donors, tests and processes donated milk to supply premature babies with a safe supply of human milk nutrition.
Donating milk is done in the privacy of your home and at no cost to you. Once qualified as a donor, Prolacta provides breast milk storage bags and shipping coolers with pre-paid shipping labels. Every shipment they receive is matched to the donor’s DNA profile, screened for bacteria, and tested for drugs of abuse and other substances. It is then pasteurized, labeled with nutritional value and sold to our NICU and NICUs around the country.
Learn More About Becoming a Donor
For more information about Northeast Georgia Medical Center’s Donor Milk Program, visit the Prolacta donor milk program.