Milk is Life-Saving Medicine

Jami Marvin and her team at The Milk Bank process human milk that helps premature and fragile infants. The milk is provided by women who donate their breast milk to feed these children in need. Every month they are able to provide nearly 150,000 feedings, which helps reduce infant mortality of NICU babies by 75%.

“We couldn’t do this without women who just want to give. Nobody gets to directly thank them. They don’t get to see the end recipient,” Jami shares, “To me, love is helping and helping people you don’t know.”

Video Transcript

Jami Marvin: Every ounce of milk can provide up to three feedings for a baby. We’re talking babies that are smaller than a loaf of bread sometimes. So in any given month, we’re able to hit almost 150,000 feedings for these NICU babies.

I’m Jami Marvin, and I run a team that processes human milk for premature and fragile infants. This is my zone, this is my area back here. The milk comes to us frozen from the individual donors, and then my team makes sure that it’s safe. All of those will be put into bottles, get labeled, go into cages, and then they will be run through our pasteurizer. This is one of our two pasteurizers.

Most formula is derived from cow’s milk. And the proteins in cow’s milk are physically too big for these very tiny babies to be able to process through their gut, through their system, through their intestines. So it reduces infant mortality of these NICU babies by 75%. So it’s more than just food and nutrition. It really is a lifesaving medicine.

(Jami shows photo of baby on computer screen) So this is right when my little peanut was born.

So when my daughter was born, she actually was born with her nose not being perfectly symmetrical. She ended up having sacks of spinal fluid in her brain. At 17 days old, she had brain surgery. I have the memories of it, but the pictures really help bring everything back to light because I’ve definitely blocked a lot of it out. I don’t recommend it for anybody. It’s not a good time.

We want to be everything all the time, and it’s a huge thing to feel the guilt that I can’t do this, but just knowing that there are people that you don’t even know out there who have your back, who are able to help. And I know some of our recipients, that’s how they feel. They know that there’s a community of people out there who are just wrapping around them and helping them in that time.

We couldn’t do this without women who just want to give. Nobody gets to directly thank them. They don’t get to see the end recipient. So to me, love is helping and helping people you don’t know, and just knowing that I’m doing something good in the world and somebody somewhere is going to be appreciative of it.