Should Women Be Paid for Donating Their Breast Milk?

When Ariyah Georges was born 15 weeks early, she weighed only one pound, 12 ounces. Her mother, Jovan, knew how important breastfeeding was, especially for micro-preemies like Ariyah, so she began pumping milk to feed her through a tube. But two days later, Jovan felt dizzy and feverish—104 degrees, in fact. She had a blood infection and was close to full septic shock.

“I almost croaked,” Jovan says. She entered quarantine for nearly two weeks at the regional Northern Virginia hospital where she’d delivered. During that time, she could still pump breast milk, but Ariyah couldn’t consume it because of the risk of developing sepsis herself. Without it, the newborn was particularly vulnerable to a disease called necrotizing enterocolitis, the number-one cause of death among premature infants in the United States.

Enter donor milk—breast milk purchased by hospitals for mothers who aren’t able to produce enough milk on their own, due to health complications, stress, or