Premature babies offered donated breastmilk in Tasmanian first.

In a Tasmanian first, premature babies at the Royal Hobart Hospital are now being offered donated human breastmilk, flown in from Queensland.

Dubbed “liquid gold” the milk is screened and pasteurised in Brisbane, before being frozen and flown to Tasmania packed in dry ice.

It is being offered to babies in the neo-natal intensive care unit, born before 34 weeks and under a particular weight.

Lactation consultant Christina Galloway spearheaded the plan and said it was very exciting.

“We have now received our sixth delivery of donor human milk and it’s coming from Brisbane and it’s so exciting because for years we’ve been waiting for this,” she said.

So far 17 babies have benefited from the donor milk, including a set of twins, and Ms Galloway said no parents had refused it.

Lucius Blake is one of those babies.

He was born at 29 weeks, weighing just over a kilo, but six weeks on he is thriving thanks to the generosity of a stranger from Queensland.

His mum, Emily Blake, said it took the pressure off mothers waiting for their milk supply to build up, during what was already an anxious and stressful time.

“I was a little bit cautious about it but (the hospital) goes into detail about how it’s all done behind the scenes so I was pretty happy, me and my partner were pretty happy to give him that option to help him get bigger and better,” she said.

Until now formula was the only option when breastmilk was unavailable, but evidence suggests donor milk is better tolerated than formula in premature babies and can reduce their risks of developing certain illnesses.

Christina Galloway said it was the next best food to the mother’s own milk.

“It’s still got some of the immune factors in it so it so it can coat the gut and protect it which formula does none of those things,” she said.

Ms Galloway said the milk was perfectly safe.

“Because the milk is screened similarly to how a donors for a blood bank are screened then we can be pretty certain that it’s a very safe product and we have very strict guidelines for making sure that it comes in a cold chain manner, so the temperature is controlled right from Queensland to here,” she said.

Mums using social media to source milk

Milk sharing is not a new concept, many Tasmanian mums have already been sourcing and donating excess breastmilk via social media.

Mother of two, Christabel Porter, said she had donated in the past and was about to do it again.

“I asked the lactation consultants at the Royal if they could take it and they said no, I asked the other mums I knew but most of them were pretty established at that point and then I looked at the Human Milk for Human Babies Facebook page and then through the Hobart Mum’s Network I found someone that needed milk so I got in contact and gave her six litres,” she said.

“I really like that my hours of hours of pumping isn’t going down the drain but also it’s going to someone who wants it and needs it.”

Mrs Porter said she was happy to answer any health questions the recipients may have.

“I’m very happy to give them copies of blood tests or anything like that if they need it, none of them have actually asked me for that but a lot of them ask questions about alcohol, caffeine, smoking, my general health,” she said.

Lactation consultant Christina Galloway understands milk sharing is common, but has warned mothers of the risks.

“There’s no control over if someone’s donating and they have got a disease or an infection. While women are free to make those decisions I think they need to realise there should be some level of screening,” she said.

Tasmanian breastmilk being poured down the drain

Many Tasmanian mums were frustrated there was still not a regulated milk-sharing system in place.

Ellen Breganti, who was fortunate to have an oversupply of breastmilk, recently threw out 25 litres.

She said it was heartbreaking.

“It’s your blood, sweat and tears in my situation to produce that milk it was such an effort to manage fatigue and everything that you go through in those first few months of being a new mum to then have to throw it out or not have anywhere to donate it,” she said.

“It is frustrating, it seems a bit silly that milk’s being flown from the mainland when there’s a pool of mothers in Tasmania that would more than happily donate.”

Milk banks are operating New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, but Ms Galloway said currently a milk bank was considered unviable in Tasmania.

“The Royal Brisbane has a milk bank and that’s the newest one and that cost $250,000 to set up and $200,000 a year to run and based on those figures we thought that here with only about 10 babies a year who would need it, it wasn’t viable,” she said.

But she agreed it would be nice for Tasmanian mothers to donate their excess milk.

“It would be really nice to somehow send our milk back to Queensland because I do have a lot of mothers who don’t struggle with milk supply and who end up with a lot more milk than they need and it would be lovely if we could send it up, but we actually haven’t got an avenue to do that yet, because it is quite costly,” she said.

Those willing to donate were urged to contact milk banks in other states.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.