Mother's own milk is preferred nutrition for a premature infant. Mother's own milk delivered "fresh" or not ever frozen has been consistently shown to have higher nutritional content and retain more immune-protective factors. However delivering fresh milk to bedside proves to be a systems-based challenge in large units. Some large children's hospitals have processes to routinely freeze all milk upon entry. Does your neonatal intensive care unit consistently deliver fresh milk to your infant when available?
No we don't such process of freezing mother's milk in our NICU but mothers constantly supply fresh milk for the babies.
Our NICU offers only fresh mother's milk for preterm babies. We have an organized schedule and place for extraction, the newest fresh milk is always offered on same day. The excess is first refrigerated and if not used, only then it is frozen. Until five year's ago all mother's milk offered was pasteurized, but since '11 we don't do it anymore. We are currently analyzing data comparing pasteurized human milk and mother's own fresh milk and expect to publish some answers by the end of this year.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Publication