How donated breast milk helped Flynn

It didn’t seem real at first — baby Flynn was going to be arriving much earlier than expected. There was a flurry of activity in the room with doctors everywhere, and nobody knew what to think. 

Babies like Flynn are especially vulnerable, and breast milk can go a long way to helping them grow. The problem? His mum, Emma, was on her own road to recovery. She’d lost a lot of blood during the birth and her body needed some time before she could start producing the breast milk Flynn needed. 

That’s where Lifeblood (and all our generous donors) came in. Thanks to donated breast milk which had been tested, pasteurised and tested some more, Flynn got the nutrition he needed safely and Emma had one less thing to worry about. 

View the transcript

00:00 MAN: When the emergency, like, really hit,

00:02 there were a cast of thousand doctors in the room and I was just sort of holding on and…

00:09 ..hoping everything was gonna be alright there.

00:12 WOMAN: The thought of him arriving so early was terrifying.

00:15 And they had to whip him out pretty quickly,

00:17 then rush straight down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

00:21 My body had been through the mill.

00:23 I'd lost a lot of blood, so it took my body some time to recover

00:25 and start to be able to actually produce what he needed to grow and survive.

00:30 So, knowing that he was being fattened up with the donated breast milk was just such a relief.

00:36 The Lifeblood Donated Breast Milk Program is such a new program that not many people knew about it,

00:40 so it was such a weight off our minds to know that that's what he was going to get.

00:44 It's such a huge thing for people to do, to donate their blood, their breast milk, you know, their time.

00:50 I think it's so heartwarming to know there's so many people out there willing to help

00:54 and wanting to help others.

00:56 My name is Emma and my family depend on Lifeblood.