A breast milk transportation service gets babies their milk, no matter where mom is

Erika Millender’s Toyota fishtailed over the ice as she shuddered onto the highway and headed toward her destination. She turned the radio up loud, to feel less alone in the driving snow and the dark. This was turning-back weather.

But Millender was not coming home until her errand was complete. She had precious cargo to deliver: human breast milk, dutifully pumped by a mother whose love and dedication was powerful enough to keep her premature twins alive, but not to conjure up money for gas.

Most of Millender’s deliveries are not this treacherous. As a volunteer with the Detroit-area nonprofit Mama’s Mobile Milk, she picks up pumped breast milk from mothers and delivers it to their babies when the two are separated. Three, in this case.

'The infant has a right to have optimal health and nutrition'

Mama’s Mobile Milk relies on a small roster of volunteers around Detroit and Flint, Michigan. They carefully shuttle breast milk between mothers and their babies in neonatal intensive care and moms who are separated from their infants due to Child Protective Services involvement or other custodial issues.

But their philosophy has little to do with circumstances and more to do with the belief that babies have a right to their mother’s milk, red tape be damned.

“The infant has a right to have optimal health and nutrition, period,” said Mama’s Mobile Milk co-founder Sekeita Lewis-Johnson, a doctorally prepared, board-certified family nurse practitioner and International Board of Lactation certified consultant.

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Mama’s Mobile Milk has transported more than 120 gallons of breast milk for 16 families during the past three years, for babies whose mothers were hospitalized, in rehab, unable to get to the hospital or kept away from temporary foster placements. Now, its leaders hope that a million-dollar state appropriation comes through to allow them to begin serving incarcerated women.

The time and effort those mothers put into pumping milk to babies they might not even get to see or hold is a testament to their love and dedication, says program director Angelene Love.

“Putting a baby to your boob, once you get the hang of it, it's like second nature, you can start flipping pancakes,” said Love. But pumping can be dreary, time-consuming work. “I think it's such a testimonial, especially with moms that are separated from their baby for CPS,” Love said. “They're sitting there pumping this milk … to be able to just put all this work into giving your baby what you want to give them and what they deserve. It's just — it's so beautiful.”

Breast milk is best, but moms face 'numerous barriers'

Millender, who is also a birth and postpartum doula, says one of the most moving volunteer experiences she had was delivering milk from a woman who'd given birth to the newborn’s new home with adoptive parents.

“She was not going to raise this child, but she still wanted to make sure that the baby was getting this strong, healthy life start,” Millender said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants consume only breast milk for the first six months of life, but recognizes that “numerous barriers to breastfeeding remain, and disparities persist in breastfeeding duration and exclusivity rates by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status.”

Black and Hispanic women are less likely to continue providing breast milk for their very low birthweight infants throughout their stay in the NICU, according to a study in the Journal of Pediatrics.

The barriers are “mindboggling,” if you ask Lewis-Johnson, who says our values as a nation — an overall lack of support for breastfeeding and willful ignorance of predatory marketing by companies that manufacture baby formula — don’t coincide with the recommendations to breastfeed and the evidence that it sets up children for a lifetime of better health.

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The underground railroad of breast milk

Lewis-Johnson was working as hospital-based lactation consultant in Detroit when she cared for a new mother who was exclusively breastfeeding her infant, until the day she was discharged and her baby was removed to a temporary foster placement while CPS ensured the mother could safely care for the child. The mother wanted to continue providing breast milk for her baby, but the agency told her she couldn’t.

This was something Lewis-Johnson could not stand for.

“I informed her that the social worker didn’t have the ability or right to dictate what the baby ate.” But it was more than that, they told her. The baby was being placed over an hour away. There would be no way to transport the milk.

Lewis-Johnson doesn’t believe in “no ways.” She called the supervisor at CPS. Surely some courier service could bring mom’s milk to her baby, she pressed. “Well, it’s Friday,” he responded, shaking his head.

First, she educated. She brought out the statistics on infant mortality in Detroit, which is more than twice the state average but significantly reduced when breastfeeding is initiated. Then, she bluffed.

“I can get someone to transport this milk for the weekend,” she told him. Except the friend was her.

But later, as she was telling an actual friend about the situation, the women couldn’t get over how unconscionable it seemed that no one would help this mother get milk to her baby. They started reaching out to people they knew would be allies, throwing together a support system. Lewis-Johnson began thinking of it as the underground railroad of milk.

The group made sure the mom’s milk reached her baby for the next two weeks. And Mama’s Mobile Milk was born.

“It’s probably one of the biggest things that I’ve ever done where I feel like, yes, this is meaningful, this is contributing to health, and we’re making it happen without the red tape,” Lewis-Johnson said.

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A NICU success story

Breastfeeding her son was important to Lillian Murray, and before Adonis was born, she’d brewed raspberry leaf tea, heated herself mugs of Mother’s Milk and taken lactation supplements.

But Adonis was born at 32 weeks and developed necrotizing enterocolitis that required surgery and a NICU stay. Murray wanted to be with him, but she didn’t have a car. She called every two or three hours just to ask how he was doing and find out which doctors were taking care of him. But she could afford to get to the hospital in person only two or three times a week.

For over a month, Mama’s Mobile Milk came to her home, picked up whatever she had managed to pump, and brought it to Adonis.

“I was pumping every day, every single day just to give them something to take up there to him,” Murray remembered. “It was a roller coaster for me, obviously. I’m sure it was more of a roller coaster for him.”

Adonis will turn 2 in September. He likes watching "Sesame Street" and dumping out his toy box. Murray is grateful that Mama’s Mobile Milk helped for as long as she needed them.

“That was just a real breath of fresh air to know that there are people like that around that actually care,” she said.

A million-dollar proposal

Mama’s Mobile Milk relies on a small team of volunteers linked together by a group chat, where program director Love sends out the “bat signal” when she learns of a baby in need.

Love says limited capacity and a lack of awareness — there’s no advertising budget — has kept the number of families Mama’s Mobile Milk has served down.

But it could soon get a lot bigger.

In October 2021, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer expanded maternal and postpartum health care for prisoners, allowing incarcerated women to nurse during visits and pump breast milk. But any milk they pump currently gets dumped. Their babies, wherever they are, don’t get a drop.

“You think about the work that you've just put into this and then just to see it, literally go down the drain … that in itself is very disheartening,” Love said.

Mama’s Mobile Milk wants to partner with the Michigan Department of Corrections to get that milk to the babies it was made for. They’ve worked with state Sen. Erika Geiss, D-Taylor, to get a $1.2 million appropriation included in the proposed budget the Senate Appropriations Committee sent to the full Senate for a vote. Lewis-Johnson and Love believe that such funding would allow them to overcome all the hurdles, from providing pumps, cleaning supplies and coolers to hiring extra prison staff to make pumping possible.

And then it will pay for people. To drive the prized milk down the highways and the icy back roads to waiting babies, separated but still loved.

If Mama’s Mobile Milk begins working with incarcerated women, Millender says she’ll be the first to raise her hand to volunteer.

“That's so powerful in terms of protecting their children, whether they are with them physically or not,” she said. “That's parenting. That's protection. That's helping them to get the best life that they can have.”

Jennifer Brookland covers child welfare for the Detroit Free Press in partnership with Report for America. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Reach her at jbrookland@freepress.com.