Safe and Less Safe Breast Milk Sharing, Plus Some Notable New Blog Posts by Nurses

Figure. The milk room, Mothers' Milk Bureau, Children's Welfare Association, New York City, 1930s, where breast milk donations were collected under careful supervision. Photo from the AJN archives. Figure. The milk room, Mothers’ Milk Bureau, Children’s Welfare Association, New York City, 1930s, where breast milk donations were collected under careful supervision. Photo from the AJN archives.

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Today’s post was going to consist solely of links to a few posts by nurse bloggers that seemed worth your attention. But first, since everyone is tweeting about it this morning:

Breast milk sharing. Breast milk purchased or otherwise obtained via the Web can be tainted, according to a New York Times article today summarizing a new study published in Pediatrics. Money quote:

The report found that breast milk bought from two popular Web sites was often contaminated with high levels of bacteria, including, in a few instances, salmonella. The amounts detected in some samples were sufficient to sicken a child.

It so happens that AJN covered breast milk sharing just last year in an AJN Reports article called “Breast Milk Sharing is Making a Comeback, But Should It?” We looked at the lack of […]

A Decidedly Female Focus: June Highlights

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

This month’s issue of AJN has a decidedly female focus, from the cover to the last page.

On the cover, we used an illustration of ancient Roman mosaics depicting women exercising.

The editorial focuses on the politicization of women’s health issues. (Read it and see if you agree—we’ve already received both pro and con letters.)

AJN Reports discusses safety issues connected with the often unregulated sharing of breast milk among women via Internet-enabled sale or donation.

The two CE offerings focus on women’s health: “Managing Menopausal Symptoms” is the third in our series on women’s health and provides an overview of managing a few of the more common and troublesome menopausal “changes”—for the sake of historical perspective, we included an archival piece from 1910, “Dangers of the Menopause” (abstract only; archival articles require a subscription).

The other CE, “Just Heavy Menses or Something More? Raising Awareness of von Willebrand Disease,” takes a detailed look at an inherited bleeding disorder that afflicts equal numbers of men and women. While much of the article’s information on the disorder and its recognition and management is relevant for both sexes, the article draws particular attention to women who are often not diagnosed because the disorder may present through symptoms associated with a woman’s menstruation pattern.

Lastly, “Seized,” our moving Reflections essay this month, tells the story of a mother’s  feeling of powerlessness in the face of her daughter’s […]

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