Milk Lab at Golisano Children’s Hospital helps premature infants get stronger

Sarah Moreno says it’s hard to describe what it was like seeing her twin babies after they were born prematurely, at 31 weeks.

“The first time I saw them, it was terrifying,” she said.

A normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

One of Moreno’s goals as a new mother was to breast feed, but because her daughters were so small after birth, normal breast feeding wasn’t going to work.

“Normally, you feed a baby within an hour of them being born. We didn’t have that,” Moreno said. “It was scary! To be honest, it was scary.”

That’s where the Milk Lab at Golisano Children’s Hospital came in, taking milk pumped by Moreno and feeding it to her girls.

“I get to see these babies that are born less than a pound get their own mother’s milk,” said Beth Futral, a pharmacy technician at the lab. “And they work with donor milk. This sample is frozen. They put it in a machine to warm it so it can be prepared for the baby.”

The lab processes milk produced by mothers and donors, stores it, fortifies it and is then able to be given to the babies as they grow healthy enough to leave the hospital.

The lab has a lot of work to do, however. There are as many as 2,500 orders coming in every month.

But thanks to the hard work by those who staff the Milk Lab, babies Rosalie and Lilah are doing just fine after their two-month stay in the hospital.

“I just can’t even describe how joyful it was to finally have them home with us,” Moreno said.

And it’s a feeling shared by many parents who have benefited from this facility.

Rosalie and Lilah are now 10 months old.

The Golisano Milk Lab serves up to 64 beds in the hospital. Studies have shown that breast feeding babies can lower their risk of developing asthma or allergies later in life.