The third choice is the milk of another human mother. The fourth and last choice is artificial baby milk. For mothers who are unable to breast-feed their own babies, a small network of human milk banks exists in the United States. Healthy newborns have lowest priority, regardless of the status of the mother. There is simply too much demand from sick and premature babies and other gravely ill children, where mothers' milk represents survival and a decent shot at good health, with no real good alternative.
More publicity helps to generate more donors.
People call me all the time and say they've been dumping breast-milk because they didn't have room in the freezer and didn't realize there was an alternative. It also helps to spread the word to more physicians, who become interested in having this milk available to their sick patients. Currently, the small scale on which human milk is processed and distributed makes it prohibitively expensive for most families compared to infant formula. The processing fee that we charge covers only about half the cost to process the milk. We must constantly work to raise funds.