Breast-Food?

This morning, Mauricio emailed me with this article today.  If you don't have time to read it, it's about a cafe in London that is selling breast-milk ice-cream for $22 a bowl.  That's a little steep for a bowl of ice-cream, don't ya think?  And here I am complaining about the $7 we spend at Cold Stone every once in a while!

Well this got me thinking.  I have a freezer FULL of breast-milk!  See, no food... just milk!

When I was originally pumping this milk, while Jonas was in the NICU for 28 days, I had considered donating it.  (See  this post).  But the more I looked into it, the more I read about guidelines and regulations... such as, storing, freezing and shipping methods.  Unfortunately I had already bottled so many of them, that it wasn't going to be feasible.  So I figured I'd just use it up little by little, and then in his cereal.  Problem is... we can't go through it fast enough!

Maybe I should look into using this milk in other ways, instead of just dumping it once it expires.  I started researching ways to use my milk.  Some sites say to dump it in coffee as creamer... but we don't drink coffee.  Then I found this site that has recipes... REAL RECIPES... using breast-milk.  I guess basically you can use breast-milk in anything... only it's thinner and sweeter than cow's milk.  But seriously, who would know?!

When I asked Mau if he would have some breast-milk ice-cream, his answer was simple... "no".  I asked, "Not even mine".  Again, the answer was "no".  And I thought this man loved me?!  haha.  But, if I slipped some breast-milk in muffins or a cake, would he even know the difference?  If I make a delicious smoothie using iced breast-milk, could he tell?  Probably not.  (And now he's always going to second guess... bwahahahaha).

That site also has a recipe for breast-milk soap.  This is great because you can used expired milk for it too!  It's probably so nourishing for dry skin and sensitive baby bottoms.  I think I'll definitely try that... even if Mau "refuses" to use it.

Ok, I can feel the faces you're making just reading this.  No, I'm not a hippie and no, I don't want to live in a commune, and no, I'm probably not going to start a compost any time soon.  But, why waste it?!  Let me just step up on my soap box for a minute here...

You will drink COW'S milk... and feed your children COW'S milk, but not breast-milk?  Does this make any sense?  Cow's milk is for... COWS!  Goat's milk is for... GOATS!  Mammals lactate to feed their children... not to feed other species' children!  We are mammals, and hence we should use OUR milk... HUMAN milk, to feed our families.  Wouldn't it be something if once we became mothers and started lactating, we began feeding our entire families with our milk?  We could make all dairy products, cook with it and drink it.  And now with the whole "organic" and "green" movement, this makes more sense than ever!  What's more organic than "home-grown milk"?!  By the way, have you ever seen a cow's utters... gu-ross!  Do you personally know the cow that is providing your family with milk?  It probably isn't Bessy, your families cow that you raised since calf-hood.  You have NO IDEA what cow it is... you have NO IDEA what that cow is being fed... you have NO IDEA the living conditions or cleanliness of the cow.  And yet, this is preferable to milk from a woman living with you... because it's not as "icky"... yeah, that makes a lot of sense!

Now, that said, I'm not about to continue lactating indefinitely to feed my family.  I hate pumping and I'd probably have to force feed it to some people!  But, I'm not going to let my entire freezer stash go down the drain, so YES, I am going to be looking into these recipes and preparing some breast-milk friendly food.  If you come over, best ask before you eat!  You never know what might be hidden in our food.

Readers, I'd love to hear what you have to say about this!  Please leave a comment!