Darby Beranek’s deep freeze overflows with tiny packets of magic elixir, grouped in larger zip-close bags. At first she was elated by how quickly her stash multiplied. But she only has one freezer, and she only has one baby, writes Anna Gronewold in Family.
Shortly after Beranek’s first child was born in February, she discovered her body makes more milk than her daughter, Lucinda, could possibly drink. She quickly stored enough to return part time to her job as a pharmacist, and soon her husband couldn’t fit so much as a steak into the freezer. But Beranek just couldn’t throw breast milk in the garbage.
“Everyone calls it liquid gold,” she said.
A lactation consultant at the Baptist Health Expressly for You Store recommended she donate to a breast milk bank. This year Arkansas opened two milk depots — one at Baptist and a second at the Van Buren County Breastfeeding Resource Center in Clinton. See Wednesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for more on these life-saving programs.