Milk for babies
One of the lesser-known cargos Blood Bike volunteers carry is human donor milk.
The liveried bikes with the word BLOOD written in bold across the front are pretty hard to miss. But what you might not know about Blood Bikes is that they sometimes also carry human milk. Yes volunteers deliver human breast milk to the premature baby unit at John Radcliffe.
Not only to we use our liveried vehicles, but we also use our own bikes and cars saving the charity money. It can get busy, same days delivering over 20 bottles for John Radcliffe’s hungry babies.
What do the nurses at John Radcliffe say?
“I am just writing to thank all the lovely volunteers that help with the milk bank collections and to tell you about the exciting changes. The new Intensive care unit has now opened increasing the number of babies to 50 at any one time. Therefore the unit has got a lot more hungry mouths to feed. Due to the amount of milk this is creating we are getting our 2nd pasteuriser installed doubling the amount we can process at any one time.“
What do the mums say?
“My twins were born completely unexpectedly 11 weeks early at John Radcliffe in May. I had a bleed causing their early arrival and Nicholas was born dangerously anaemic and needed a blood transfusion urgently.
A couple of weeks later Harriet’s anaemia levels dropped dangerously low too as her immature bone marrow couldn’t make the amount of red cells she needed having been born so early. Both times you guys came to the rescue and their lives were saved.
They are now home and smiling, growing and thriving. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts for what you do, we appreciate it so very much.“