Five KL mothers explain their breast milk-sharing club to Emma Chong

Last year, London-based controversial confectioners The Icecreamists came out with Baby Gaga, an ice cream made from human breast milk. The furore was massive, with the ice cream selling out in a matter of hours, officials seizing scoops for testing and even Lady Gaga wading into the fray. People were outraged, titillated, and intrigued. The ice cream was ultimately declared safe for human consumption and remains The Icecreamists’ biggest claim to fame. So this is the question: What is it about breast milk that is so contentious?

The five women we have gathered round the table today are nowhere near as divisive as the ice cream men, but the premise of their network Human Milk 4 Human Babies has raised some eyebrows and provoked shuddering knee jerk reactions. It’s simple: they share breast milk. HM4HB brings together two groups of people: mothers who find themselves unable to breast feed for whatever reason, and mothers who have excess breast milk beyond their children’s needs. It’s a simple transaction, where surplus milk is transferred to those who need it, no barter or trade required (HM4HB strongly disapproves of involving money in these exchanges).

How milk-sharing works
The global Human Milk 4 Human Babies network was set up by Canadian Emma Kwasnica, friend of Malaysian chapter founder Nadine Ghows, and its success is a testament to the power of social networking. ‘A series of events prompted Emma to start this global network,’ Nadine explains. ‘A friend of hers was recently widowed and trying to find a milk mother for his daughter in Indonesia. Since Emma’s based in Canada, she basically gave a shout out on Facebook and there was an outpouring of support and offers from Indonesia’. It was clear that social media was an excellent basis for the milksharing network, and so HM4HB was launched on the networking site. Subsequently, Nadine set up the Malaysian chapter with the help of some friends, two of whom were Ayuni Zainuddin and Danielle Sweetman.

From left to right: Danielle Sweetman, Ayuni Zainuddin

How it works: If you have excess milk that you would like to share, post your offer on the network’s Facebook wall. Conversely, if you are in need of milk, post on the wall. Members will volunteer their services, or attempt to match you with someone suitable. Ayuni is keen to clarify that HM4HB is a network rather than an association or society which means as admins, she and Danielle hold the reins quite loosely. ‘We’re encouraging personal responsibility for this,’ Danielle says, ‘as obviously it’s the person’s own family that is involved and you’re creating a linkage with another family.’ Health is clearly a huge concern when it comes to the sharing of human milk, and HM4HB has wisely removed themselves from that potentially sticky legal entanglement. It’s up to individual donors and receivers to select and screen as they see fit. ‘Just going to someone’s house and taking their milk is not really what we encourage,’ Ayuni says. ‘Although people still do that because sometimes you just look at their babies – if the baby is healthy and chubby, you’re convinced already. But it’s all about making informed choices.’

Sharing is actually caring
For HM4HB members, the key point is that breast milk is a species-specific form of nutrition, and this supersedes all other foibles and doubts people may have about sharing milk. The idea that sharing breast milk is strange to other people doesn’t even faze these women any more. ‘What’s so weird about sharing human milk when other babies are drinking cow’s milk?’ Ayuni shrugs. Nadine agrees, adding ‘We always remind them; what is formula feeding in essence? You are not feeding your baby species-specific nutrition. So in that sense it’s even more “weird” to use child formulas than breast milk from another mum, from a person of the same species.'

You’d think: Other mothers will understand. But there’s a generational gap in acceptance as well. One of the biggest impediments for donor and receiver Tracy Poh were her parents and in-laws. ‘There were discouragement and disagreements especially from the elderlies when I told them about milk sharing. After we assured them the doctor encouraged us, the idea became more accepted.’

Claudia Liew has both donated and received milk, and is a complete milk-sharing convert. ‘For the first time as a mother, you can’t help but feel it’s quite strange because it’s not something that’s very common, especially in Malaysia,’ she admits. ‘But when a mother is in need for her baby, you somehow will not have the thought: Oh it’s someone else’s milk. To me it’s for the baby, and their health. And I believe that human milk is the healthiest milk ever.’

That’s the thing about these mothers – they share an encompassing maternal instinct to help out those in need. Having established that breast milk is the best milk, Claudia and Chern Pei Wei feel it’s their responsibility to help out mothers who are unable to produce it. It’s the understanding of breast milk itself that is divisive. To the general public, breast milk is personal, a bodily fluid, and that’s why the idea of sharing is so anathematic to so many people. But to these mothers, the milk producers, breast milk is a product. The best product. After all, it’s not as if the mothers were physically breastfeeding other women’s children – the milk has already been expressed, and makes no material difference to them if it’s sitting in the freezer or feeding other children.

Pei Wei perhaps best exemplifies this attitude. ‘In the beginning I was thinking, is there any mother out there that would want to take my milk?’ she says. ‘Maybe other people will feel a bit yucky taking other people’s milk. But then I started to discard my milk, and I felt very bad about it, so I just tried my luck and the mothers started to respond to my posts.’ Now she has 12 ‘milk children’, not counting her own. She was fortunate enough to have more milk than she needed, so why shouldn’t others benefit from it? Ironically, one mother who was interested in taking Pei Wei’s milk was ultimately prevented by her husband, who ‘just couldn’t take it’.

From left to right: Nadine Ghows, Claudia Liew, Chern Pei Wei

But doesn’t the practise of sharing milk remove the act of physical bonding between mother and child? The issue is that of practicality, it seems – even when feeding children their own milk, mothers are more likely to have expressed that milk than physically breastfeed. ‘So many mothers have to go back to work after two months,’ Danielle explains. ‘They’re really business-like about expressing milk for their kids on a regular schedule during the day.’ In a practical sense, expressing the milk encourages mothers to consider the milk objectively, as something separate from themselves, in turn allowing them to donate and receive milk with a more open mind.

Milk on the horizon
Uptake was slow in the network’s youth, but these days the Facebook page has over 1,000 fans, growing by 20 or 30 a day. Even with the current rate of growth, the admins are still hoping for more. ‘We still want it to get bigger because so many of our connections have been just in the Klang Valley. We’re really hoping other parts of Malaysia will be able to link up as well,’ Danielle says. Ayuni nods, adding ‘What we really hope for at the moment is the Indian mothers to come forward and share, as at the moment it’s mainly Malay and Chinese mums. We’re also looking for activity in East Malaysia. We’ve been getting requests from Kedah and Kelantan but had trouble matching them because all the mums are mostly here [in KL].’

With the numbers come added responsibilities, some aggravating, some just bizarre. ‘Recently we had a mum complain that some guy was asking her weird questions,’ Ayuni says. ‘A fetishist, possibly, but we couldn’t really pinpoint it because he didn’t say anything specific. Things like that happen in the global network, although we didn’t quite expect it to happen in Malaysia...’

In a sense it’s not surprising that HM4HB has proved so popular – the logic behind it makes sense to anyone who stops and listens, and is far more sensible than many other convoluted economic principles in practise. ‘It’s so logical,’ Danielle says. ‘People have excess milk, people have requirements for milk, and it just seems such a straightforward, easy solution. There are quite a few mothers who have a huge stock of milk and it just makes sense rather than letting it go to waste.’ The network will not sanction the sale of any breast milk, and though regular donors are often offered compensation for their milk, none ever accept. It’s good to know, even in this day and age, that money isn’t everything.

For more, visit www.facebook.com/hm4hbmalaysia