Englewood Hospital and Medical Center is now obtaining donated breast milk to give to their premature babies.
Gina Giordano, 35, wasn't expecting her baby to be born two months premature. But when her pregnancy was determined to be a risk to the health of both mother and baby, doctors delivered her son via emergency C-section.
William Cunningham was born on August 3.
Because her son was born so early, Giordano had trouble producing enough of her own breast milk to sustain him, she said.
Fortunately, Englewood Hospital and Medical Center was able to give William milk from other mothers with its new pasteurized human donor milk program, which provided the newborn some of the nutrients on which he otherwise would have missed out.
The hospital received its first shipment of breast milk late last month and William is one of first three babies to drink the donated milk.
"The donor program was a life-saver because it's so much easier for him to digest," Giordano said.
Nurse: Hospital stopped me from pumping milk
Experts say that studies show babies have a decreased risk of infection and higher IQs if they drink human milk soon after they're born.
Englewood is the most recent hospital in New Jersey to offer donated breast milk to its babies. It receives shipments from Mothers' Milk Bank Northeast.
"It's really becoming the standard of care," said Dr. Loren Deluca, a neonatologist at Englewood and its human milk program coordinator.
Englewood's program is exclusively for premature babies, but human milk can also be beneficial for babies whose mothers can't produce enough milk or who might be on medications that prevent them from breastfeeding, Deluca said.
In New Jersey, Hackensack University Medical Center and Saint Peter's Healthcare System also receive milk from Mothers' Milk Bank Northeast, said Naomi Bar-Yam, executive director of the non-profit.
Bar-Yam said that the milk and its donors go through a detailed screening process. The process is modeled after blood screening, she said.
Once the bank receives the milk, it's pasteurized, frozen and distributed along the East Coast, Bar-Yam said.
Saint Barnabas Medical Center considers itself the first hospital in the state to offer this type of program to premature infants, which it began doing about eight years ago, said Jennifer Spiegel, neonatal intensive care nurse manager at St. Barnabas Medical Center. She said it is "fabulous" that more hospitals are starting to offer the service.
Spiegel said her hospital receives its donations from a milk bank in Ohio, partly because there aren't milk banks in New Jersey. Once they do start popping up, though, the state has paved the way to regulating them.
Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde.