Human milk-sharing practices and infant-feeding behaviours: A comparison of donors and recipients

Abstract

Human milk sharing (HMS) is growing in popularity as an infant-feeding strategy in the United States. HMS families are a hidden population because HMS is a nonnormative and stigmatized behaviour. Thus, gaining access to HMS participants is challenging, and research on this topic remains limited. In particular, little is known about the broader infant-feeding behaviours of HMS parents. This study aimed to describe and compare the infant-feeding behaviours and HMS practices among a network of HMS donors and recipients. A detailed online survey was distributed to HMS parents in the Washington, DC region. Bivariate analyses were used to summarize the data by donor/recipient status when possible. Group differences were tested using analysis of variance for continuous variables and χ² tests for categorical variables. Donors and recipients did not differ in their sociodemographic characteristics. Recipients were significantly more likely than donors to have experienced complications of labour and delivery, traumatic birth, postpartum depression or a negative breastfeeding experience. Donors and recipients did not differ significantly in their duration of lactation or HM-feeding. Interestingly, 30% of recipients ever produced excess milk and 21% of donors ever had difficulty producing enough milk for their child. Compared with donors, recipients faced numerous maternal health challenges, but were still able to achieve a long duration of HM-feeding. HMS recipients represent a vulnerable group who may benefit from additional psychosocial and lactation support to improve their health and breastfeeding outcomes. Additional research is needed to investigate the associations between HMS participation, infant-feeding behaviours and lactation outcomes.

Keywords: breastfeeding; human milk; infant feeding; lactation; milk sharing.

Figure 1

Comparison of the duration of the most recent lactation and duration of human milk (HM) feeding (months) of the youngest child among HM‐sharing donors and recipients who are no longer feeding HM to their children (n = 58). The boxes represent the interquartile range containing the central 50% of values; the lines across the box represent the median values; the circles in the box represent the mean values; the whiskers represent the “minimum” (Q1 − 1.5 × IQR) and “maximum” (Q3 + 1.5 × IQR); and the circles represent outliers.