AUGUSTA — Five weeks after giving birth, Abbey Gray had an emergency surgery to remove a cyst that was twisting her ovary.

She ended up losing the ovary. The weeks after were painful and she found it difficult to produce breast milk. A first-time mother and lactation counselor living in Saco in 2021, Gray was devastated she could not breastfeed her newborn.

She met with lactation consultants and pumped exclusively, hoping to avoid formula. When a consultant recommended she purchase donor breast milk, Gray jumped onboard.

“I still wasn’t producing as much as my baby needed to be taking in a day, because he had some weight gain issues,” she said. “So we used it to supplement, which was huge for me, and such a game-changer.”

An outpatient donor breast milk dispensary opened April 15 at Kennebec Pediatrics at 6 E. Chestnut St. where patients and community members alike can access safe and healthy breast milk.

The dispensary is the result of a collaboration between MaineGeneral Health and Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast, a nonprofit milk bank that supplies milk to over a hundred hospitals across the Northeast and dispensaries in four states. Donor breast milk can help bridge the gap between one’s maternal milk supply and their newborn’s needs, said Kylia Garver, chief operating officer at the milk bank.

“Sometimes in the early days after a preterm birth, mom’s milk hasn’t come in yet,” Garver said. “Or there’s situations where mom can’t produce milk, or maybe it’s a foster situation and there’s no maternal milk available. In those cases, donor milk can provide human milk for that baby when they’re at highest risk for preterm complications.”

Families can buy up to 10 bottles of milk, 3 1/2 ounces each. The milk is screened and pasteurized for safety, Garver said.

“We blood test our donors, we pasteurize the milk and then we send it off to a third party laboratory for bacterial testing before we dispense it to hospitals or community members,” Garver said. “So there’s a lot of safety and oversight that’s embedded in nonprofit milk banking practices, and that ensures that the milk is safe for those babies that are relying on it.”

In 2024, Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast dispensed 178,933 bottles of donor milk, serving an estimated 17,000 babies. That includes babies in the NICU, in well-baby units and in the community.

Many prefer human milk to formula because of its taste, nutritional benefits and antibodies that protect against infection. One common health complication for preterm babies born before 32 weeks gestation is necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal disease that can result in bowel perforation or dangerous infection.

Gray’s newborn was born with infant tongue-tie, a condition that restricts tongue movement and makes it difficult to breastfeed. Once he had surgery, Gray said, he was able to feed consistently off a combination of breastfeeding and donor milk.

“Two weeks after he had the surgery, we noticed huge improvements, and he was able to exclusively breastfeed again,” she said. “And I think at that point we still had some donor milk left over, and would use it here and there, until we didn’t have any more of it. And it just was such a huge help.”

Kennebec Pediatrics cares for 13,000 patients in the greater Augusta area annually.

“Expanding access to safe donor breast milk will increase the number of infants who will have the opportunity to access these benefits and support breastfeeding families in their feeding goals,” said pediatrician Kelsey Walton in an email.

The opening of the dispensary comes in the wake of a statewide decline in delivery units. On April 1, MaineHealth closed delivery services at Waldo Hospital in Belfast, shifting them to Pen Bay Hospital — an extra 30-minute drive. More recently, the maternity ward closed at the now-shuttered Northern Light Inland Hospital in Waterville.

Mothers’ Milk Bank Northeast aims to disperse dispensaries across each state to promote accessibility. In Maine, there is another dispensary in Bath, and Garver said the milk bank is looking to open a couple in Portland in the coming months.

Garver said increased education will help destigmatize the use of breast milk.

“Donor milk sharing has been a long-standing practice, both in the U.S. and internationally,” Garver said. “However, there’s just not enough community awareness. One of the things that we hope to do when we launch a dispensary is to raise awareness among community members about the option of donating or receiving milk through an accredited milk bank like our own.”

Gray successfully breastfed her baby for 18 months and is now pregnant with her third child. She said any mother struggling with breastfeeding should pursue donor milk.

“I really felt like having access to that was paramount for my mental health,” Gray said. “Because I was really struggling with that transition of not being able to exclusively breastfeed and fulfill that journey that I had imagined.”