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Buying human milk

The four routes and what each costs, the families who buy and why, how to tell a careful seller from a careless one – and why the whole thing stops feeling odd after about a fortnight.

A smiling mother with her baby on one hip, handing a cool bag over on her doorstep

Where to buy breast milk

Four routes, what each costs, and who each is for

A smiling mother bottle-feeding her baby on a sofa in a bright living room

For adoptive and surrogacy families

What a month costs, why it takes more than one seller

A mother resting on a sofa with her baby dozing on her chest

When your supply isn't enough

Who to call first, and the options if the answer is settled

A woman reading the back of a formula tin at her kitchen table, her baby asleep in a bouncer

Cow's milk protein allergy

Proteins not lactose, and the donor-diet problem

Two baby bottles side by side on a worktop, one of creamy expressed milk and one of whiter prepared formula, an open tin of formula powder behind them

Human milk vs formula

The side-by-side breakdown – and why breast plus bottle works

Two women laughing together, each with a baby on her lap, mugs and toys on the rug

Buying breast milk safely

Vetting sellers, handling milk, dodging scams

A baby's hands wrapped around a warm milk bottle

Why does it feel weird?

The ick factor: recent, learned, and taken apart properly

A wire carrier of glass milk bottles beside an open cool box on a sunlit doorstep

Breast milk for adults

The gym, hair, immunity, cancer: every claim checked one at a time

Buyers arrive from very different places – an adoptive family with a newborn, a mother whose supply did not come in, a baby who reacts to every formula on the shelf, an adult buying for themselves. The routes and the prices are the same; the questions are not. And where a milk bank is the right answer, these pages say so first.

Buying human milk

Other topics

The Milk Round