This article was originally published in the October 2023 edition of Héma-Québec’s Magazine. All issues of the Magazine are available here.

Charlotte, mother's milk donor

Giving the best of yourself

While pregnant, Charlotte Archambault, an account manager at a marketing agency and business administration teacher at Cégep de Trois-Rivières, read some testimonials on social media from mothers talking about their experiences donating to Héma-Québec’s Public Mothers’ Milk Bank.

The mothers in question found the process very simple, and Charlotte agreed that it was a worthy cause. The Bank gave milk to very premature babies who couldn’t breastfeed, reducing the risk that they would develop a serious intestinal illness. At the time, it was just an inspirational story. Charlotte hadn’t given birth yet, and wasn’t thinking about donating milk when she didn’t even know if she would really be able to breastfeed.

The freezers need a break!

A few weeks after the birth of her son Lambert, Charlotte decided to try pumping milk and feeding it to him in a bottle, as breastfeeding was quite difficult. It was a big success! Charlotte started expressing her milk and feeding it to Lambert in a bottle. It was going well, but when Charlotte ended up pumping eight times a day, she quickly realized that she was pumping a lot more than Lambert could drink. “Every day I was freezing half my milk. The freezer was filling up! In fact, I had three freezers, and they were all full!”

That’s when she remembered the Héma-Québec Public Mothers’ Milk Bank. She signed up online, and was quickly contacted to answer questions about the state of her health and make an appointment for a blood test. One week later, she was accepted and received a box full of 100 ml bottles, which was pretty intimidating at first glance.

“But you don’t have to use up all the bottles. That’s not even the point! If you only fill up three of them, that’s still a big deal for the babies that need it. But in the end it really didn’t take that long to fill up all my bottles. I was already pumping my milk and I knew I had too much!” 

One reason more

Charlotte would be the first to admit it: pumping isn’t always easy!  

“Nursing your child is like giving the gift of yourself. When you pump, you lose some of the benefits of breastfeeding–the simplicity, the direct, intimate contact, the fact that you always have your child’s food with you. The only benefit is that you know you’re giving the best of yourself. And, in my case, since I was giving my surplus milk to Héma-Québec, I was even more justified in my choice to pump! It really sweetened the experience, and gave me an extra reason to do it. I doubly knew that I was doing the right thing.”

This was especially true as the donation process fit quite easily into her maternity leave routine. Every two weeks, she went with Lambert to bring the bottles to the Trois-Rivières Plasmavie. “It was a piece of cake. You’re always looking for things to do when you’re on maternity leave, and this got me out of the house. I’d carry him in the car seat while he slept. Five minutes later, I was back in the car!”

And little Lambert never even knew that he wasn’t the only one getting the best that his mother had to offer.