The Chesed 24/7 Milk Bank: How It Began

It's late at night, many years ago, in the home of one of our volunteers. Her newborn is asleep. She sets an alarm for two in the morning, and when it goes off she gets up to pump extra milk.

The extra milk is not for her own baby. It is for a baby she has never met, whose mother cannot produce enough, and whom she was told about earlier that day by someone in the community who knew about the need.

She has been nursing her own baby full time. She is already producing what she can spare. This is over and above. It requires interrupting her own sleep in the middle of the night. She does it anyway. One night. Then another.

From One Alarm to a Program

The milk bank run by Chesed 24/7 did not begin as a program. It began as the response of one nursing mother who heard about one baby in need and set an alarm. From there, other phone calls came in. Other babies with other needs. Other mothers with other reasons for not being able to provide.

Over time, the informal network grew into a coordinated service that Chesed 24/7 runs today. Kosher-observant nursing mothers across the community donate milk when they can. Chesed 24/7 coordinates the matching, the storage, the pickup, and the delivery.

The Cases That Come In

The families who need milk from the bank come in for many reasons.

Sometimes a baby has specific dietary requirements that rule out most options: no dairy in the mother's diet, no gluten, no sugar. Finding a compatible donor in a kosher-observant community is not a general search. It is a match on many criteria at once.

Sometimes the mother of a newborn is hospitalized and cannot provide milk herself. Sometimes a mother cannot produce for another reason and needs help through the first difficult weeks.

In every case, the goal is the same. A baby who needs kosher breast milk from a nursing mother should not have to wait.

Why It Works

The Milk Bank works because it is built out of exactly what one volunteer set out to give when she set her alarm at 2 a.m. It is not paid work. It is not organized around a schedule. It is available when it is needed, in whatever shape the need takes, from mothers who can give and who choose to.

Our volunteers say donating milk is not always convenient. Nursing mothers already have a full life, and setting an alarm to pump extra is not a small ask. But those who give will tell you that when they hear the phone ring and learn about a specific baby who needs specific milk, the ask stops feeling optional.

Somewhere, a mother is waiting.

What the Founder Would Tell You

Ask the founder of the Milk Bank how the program started, and she'll answer the way she has always answered. Many years ago, she says, she heard about a baby in desperate need.

That is the beginning of the story. The rest of it is still being written — one alarm at a time.

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