Human Milk 4 Human Babies - Queensland

04/05/2025

26/10/2024

18/10/2024

In issue 122, writer Freya Bennett chats about how she encountered an intimate community of women sharing breastmilk to fellow mums.

10/07/2024

National NAIDOC Week 2024

HM4HB recognises the achievements, challenges and barriers of Aboriginal & Torres straight islander Boori in receiving breastmilk.

“The most recent national data collected specifically in Aboriginal communities about breastfeeding rates identifies that 85% of Aboriginal children aged 0–3 years in remote areas and 73% in non-remote areas were breastfed in 2008. This indicates that longer breastfeeding duration which is more in keeping with traditional cultural practices is more readily achieved in remote communities (14).”

“The NSW Breastfeeding policy recognises…[that] Aboriginal mothers…are less likely to breastfeed (5). The protective health factors in breast milk would be of great benefit to Aboriginal children because they have a disproportionate number of hospital admissions for respiratory, gastrointestinal and otitis media infections than the general population (1, 6).”

All babies and children have the right to receive human milk. HM4HB is an inclusive community. We implore donors to explore their internal biases. Donate outside your comfort zone. The evidence is overwhelming that your community will be better for it.

Source:https://www.heti.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/438828/C-Helps-final.pdf

04/07/2024

At HM4HB our spaces are not "women-centered" spaces. They're baby-centered spaces. Our goal is feeding babies. Changing our language doesn’t take anything away from anyone. It simply gives more to more people, broadens our community, and makes for more matches in milk sharing.

Human Milk 4 Human Babies - Queensland Admins actively enforce unnecessarily gendering content, because doing so is setting an unfair criteria against a protected characteristic. You're not looking to help a "mama in need." You're looking to feed a baby in need. You're not looking for milk from a "mama who..." You're looking for milk from a donor. Adjusting our language is a small change that can mean the world of difference to our LGBTQ+ members, whilst improving access to more milk for more babies.

We have families of all walks of life, in so many different combinations of caregivers, whether they're parents, guardians, custodial relatives, etc. But we also have trans and nonbinary bio parents. Donors who are not women. Gestational parents who are not "mums." Not all people seeking donor milk are women - single dads, gay dads, dads who are actively involved in the care and feeding of their babies are praised for being in our spaces. Guardians and foster parents too. How you choose to refer to yourself is precisely what we are protecting here. You are most welcome to refer to yourself in gendered language that you personally identify with. But doing so to address others is ignoring another subset of our community here who encounter more barriers to milk-sharing.

We will decline group post submissions that exclude some of our members (whether or not that was the OP’s intentions) whom we value and deserve to be seen and addressed here.

For those who cannot and will not learn and grow with us, understand that any limitations from that are self-imposed. Your freedom to make that choice and engage elsewhere without ever knowing the barriers minority groups continue to face in milk-sharing is also your privilege. Any attempt made to ridicule those members, our admins, and our guidelines, whether that be in comments or reactions, will result in an immediate block & ban without warning. In the context of milksharing personal opinions are no justification for that behaviour on our platforms and we are never obligated to give anyone a warning on this.