Putting Breast Milk to Good Use (Time Magazine)

A Minnesota mom finds a way to send surplus milk to HIV/AIDS orphans in Africa

Geny Cassady's daughter Madison was born last November with a congenital heart defect and needed surgery at five days old. While she was hospitalized, nurses encouraged Cassady to pump and store breast milk for her daughter's recovery. But that time never came — Madison died of a pulmonary embolism less than two weeks later. For a month, Cassady couldn't look at the containers in her freezer because the sight of the unused milk was too hard to bear. "It wasa very difficult time," she says. Her husband, Bill, finally poured them down a sink drain while she was out.

The Cassadys didn't know of any other choice; doctors and nurses at the hospital hadn't offered any alternatives other than disposing of it. But now a program named for their daughter offers a way for mothers who have lost children to donate their milk in an effort to help some of the world's most vulnerable children. The Madison Cassady Program is a part of the larger International Breast Milk Project, which helps feed children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in Africa with surplus breast milk from mothers in the U.S.



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