Over the next six weeks, she produced 673 ounces of breast milk, which she donated to the Mother's Milk Bank in Austin, Texas. Her milk was pooled with that of two other mothers and was distributed to 12 to 20 other premature infants, according to the milk bank. The July 1999 issue of the British Medical Journal reported a study in which German children who were nourished exclusively with breast milk during the first three to five months of life were less likely to suffer from obesity when they reached school age than those raised on other foods. Human breast milk is also used to help heal babies with infectious diseases, severe diarrhea and pneumonia. Children with renal failure, cardiac problems and burns may also benefit from mother's milk.
Some children can digest nothing else.
Take, for example, Hannah Stewart of San Bernardino, California. Hannah weighed only one pound at birth and could not stomach any nourishment. After months of hospitalization, her physicians declared they could do nothing else for her. At the last moment, a family friend suggested human milk. But milk banks are on the rise, buoyed by medical research suggesting that human milk is far superior to both cow's milk and baby formulas.