Intermountain Medical Center in Murray has opened a breast milk collection center to serve the Mother’s Milk Bank in Denver. Mothers are able give their extra milk to the center within days of being screened.
Lori Eining is the director of Women’s Services for IMC. She says even though lactation specialists at Intermountain have been working for about a year to get the center going, they’re unsure what the supply will be.
“Because this is so new to Intermountain Healthcare. We’ve got a couple of donation sites that have been successful,” says Eining, “like in the Dixie Region, and so we’re anticipating that it’s going to be very successful and that we should receive a lot of milk.”
Miriam Bastian is confident the center will succeed. She is a nurse practitioner in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units of both IMC and Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. She helped set up IMC’s collection center as a task force member of the Mountain West Mother’s Milk Bank. Bastian says the body of scientific evidence is overwhelming in favor of mother’s milk over formula, especially for newborns.
“It’s even more important for medically fragile babies like premature babies or babies with heart disease or intestinal problems,” says Bastian, “Mother’s milk has been associated with a lot less complications.”
Bastian says the goal is to have a facility in the Salt Lake Valley dedicated to the collection and distribution of milk by next year. She says the culture is swinging back toward the increased benefits of mother’s milk.
