Milk Matters

05/12/2025

Do you need space in your freezer over the festive season and have breastmilk your baby is not going to need?

Please donate it to Milk Matters?

Milk donations are desperately low at present and we know demand tends to increase over the festive season, so we need your help to stock our freezers for the coming month.

Contact us to register so your milk can be a lifeline to a tiny preemie this festive season.

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

01/12/2025

Teeny tiny premature babies need your extra breastmilk.

They are at high risk of potentially fatal complications, such as necrotising enterocolitis, if they are not kept breastmilk fed in at least their early weeks of life.

Demand always exceeds supply, so if you have more milk than your own baby needs and would like to join us in , then please get in touch with us?

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

28/11/2025

In the high-tech world of neonatal ICUs, two of the most vital ways to care for and support the premature babies are not 'tech'.

The one is the involvement of the parents in caring for their baby - expressing, doing skin-to-skin care, breastfeeding when possible, touching, talking, loving their baby.

The second is using donor milk from a milk bank in the absence of the mother's own milk.

Milk banks and donor milk play a vital role in keeping premature babies breastmilk fed, with the nutritive, protective and healing benefits that brings.

Supporting a milk bank means supporting very vulnerable premature babies.

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

27/11/2025

For a premature baby, your breast milk is truly "liquid gold." 🥇 It’s easier to digest than formula, perfectly tailored to their tiny, developing gut, and provides vital antibodies to fight off infections—a critical need for preemies. Your milk supports brain development and can even decrease the risk of serious complications. You are making medicine! Keep going, mama!

25/11/2025

Donor breastmilk is a short-term emergency intervention that not only saves premature babies lives in the short-term, but is a bridge to breastfeeding, with the long-term health benefits that has for both mother and baby.

There are many ways to support your local milk bank other than the obvious need for breastmilk donations.

Please get in touch if you would like to support Milk Matters in some way, e.g. donations of funds, expertise, time, goods or breastmilk.

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

22/11/2025

When a mother is unable to provide breastmilk for her premature baby, then donor milk is a life-saving alternative.

Thanks to generous mothers donating their extra breastmilk, premature babies in neonatal ICUs across Cape Town and beyond receive donor milk from Milk Matters 365 days of the year.

The more donor milk we have, the more babies we can feed and the more lives we can save.

Would you like to get involved?

Contact us:
info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

22/11/2025

Want low-literacy lactation infographics to share with families? This is one of the 9 different topics I co-created with the amazing folks at Noodle Soup. Order all 9 tear pads of 50 sheets (one side in English, one in Spanish) here (for shipment to US addresses): https://www.noodlesoup.com/product-category/breastfeeding-2/educational-handouts-breastfeeding-2/nancy-mohrbacher/

19/11/2025

Did you know that 50ml of breastmilk can feed a premature baby of under 1kg for a full 24 hours in their first few days of life?

Or that this donor milk can make the difference between the recipient baby surviving or not?

Contact us if you have extra breastmilk and would like to become a Breastmilk Donor.

You will be !

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

18/11/2025

Let me say this louder for the moms in the back who are being sold teas, pills, cookies, powders, and every magical unicorn potion on the internet:

Milk supply is built by milk removal.

Not by a smoothie.
Not by a supplement.
Not by a drink someone swears “boosted them overnight.”

Your breasts respond to one thing above everything else: how often and how effectively milk is being removed. That’s it. That’s the physiology. When milk sits in the breast, production slows. When milk is removed frequently and consistently, production increases.

Yes, some things can support you. Hydration. Nutrition. Rest. Good fl**ge fit. Stress management. But nothing replaces the actual signal that tells your body “hey, we need more milk.”

If you’re struggling, it’s not your fault. You’re not doing anything wrong. You just need the right information, not false promises.

Remove milk often.
Protect your supply.
Trust your body.

17/11/2025

Today is World Prematurity Day.

It is a day to celebrate the good things in place to support preterm babies and their families as well as to identify areas that remain a challenge and need to be improved.

What can we do to give these tiny babies the best possible start to life and the greatest chance of surviving and thriving?

Needless to say high on our list are:
- Breastfeeding Support (including education about the importance of expressing),
- initiating and supporting Kangaroo Mother Care or Skin-to Skin Care as soon as possible (which is often sooner than one might think!)
- Breastmilk Donation and Human Milk Banks

Top of our list of those to be celebrated are most definitely our wonderful Donor Mothers! Thank you for caring and for donating your extra milk. You are

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

Sometimes though, a mother is not able to provide the breastmilk her baby needs – and what alternative is used matters.

16/11/2025

Tomorrow is World Prematurity Day, a day we focus on the challenges faced by preterm infants, their families and their healthcare workers.

One challenge is ensuring these tiny babies are kept breastmilk fed. Ideally with their own mother's milk and failing that, by donor milk.

These tiny babies need to fight hard for survival and we can help them in that by supporting breastfeeding and human milk banking.

info@milkmatters.org
082 895 8004

16/11/2025

Human milk is the only biologically active food on the planet.
It contains living cells, stem cells, immunoglobulins, lysozymes, lactoferrin, HMOs, hormones, cytokines, enzymes, microRNA, antimicrobials, antivirals, and over 1,000 molecular components that scientists are still discovering.

Every single feed triggers a biochemical feedback loop:
your baby’s saliva signals your mammary glands, your glands adjust the concentration of antibodies, and the composition of your milk shifts within minutes to meet that exact need.

Breast milk is not “liquid gold” because it’s cute it’s liquid gold because it is a dynamic, species-specific, immunologically active substance engineered by human evolution to protect human infants.

The more we study it, the clearer it becomes:
breast milk isn’t just nutrition it’s a living system.
A biological masterpiece that no lab has ever been able to duplicate.