Of these online milk classified sites, Only The Breast is king. Compared to the handful of listings found on competitors Breastmilkforsale.co, Kijiji and Craigslist, Only The Breast offers thousands of ounces of milk at varying price points: "Moms with babies in need want an easy way of buying breast milk at a competitive price, and many moms breastfeeding babies need the extra income so they can work from home by selling their breast milk," according to the Only The Breast about page.The site works like Craigslist, except it only sells one product: human breast milk. There are over 10,000 different classified ads and 45 million ounces of milk flowing through the classified site at any given time. That's because, after pumping, sellers freeze their remaining un-drunk milk in order to keep it fresh for potential buyers. If the frozen milk doesn't get sold, it winds up competing for precious shelf space with frozen peas and chicken breasts in freezers across America: "Lots of milk, freezer is full, must go. Low price!" writes one user. "Healthy Olympia, Washington Mama Looking to Clear Out the Freezer!" writes another. "Discount! No room in freezer chest!!!" says a third. And the freezer proclamations go on and on.Read More: The Broadly Guide to Pregnancy
Despite the flood of easy money promised to sellers, several women who advertise their breast milk online tell Broadly that they have difficulty finding legitimate buyers. All the breast milk sellers I spoke to expressed the same thing: they joined Only The Breast because they heard it was a way to make extra money, something they desperately needed after having a child without paid maternity leave or childcare benefits. However, according to their accounts, the online breast milk marketplace is teeming with scammers with unconvincing stories.If I was offered maternity benefits, I would definitely be donating breast milk instead [of selling it].
"Am Alison…my wife died when given birth so am in need of breast milk for my baby and i will like to make and Inquire about your breast Milk,I need about 800 to 3000 oz and i also have a shipping agent that will handle the shipping and packaging.so you do not need to bother about the shipping.i will like to ask few questions?__
"Am keith…my wife died when given birth so am in need of breast milk for my baby and i will like to make and Inquire about your breast Milk,I need about 800 to 3000 oz and i also have a shipping agent that will handle the shipping and packaging.so you do not need to bother about the shipping.i will like to ask few questions?"
"Hi, Is this breast milk still available for sale I need 150oz ASAP….I also want you to know that I intend paying with a certified check….If yes please get back to me with the final asking price okay? Paula"
Fetishists are another demographic known to actively contact sellers. There are currently over 1,200 listings on the site's "Willing to sell to men" category. While some of those men are single dads, gay couples, or body builders, others are men who get sexual gratification from breast milk. Of those fetishists, some even ask to wet nurse directly from sellers. In one of Erin's messages, for example, a man who went by James wrote, "200.00 for one session if I can :) suck the milk straight from your breasts."Once sellers are done fielding off scammers and wet nursing enthusiasts, they often have to wait for a serious buyer—the financial benefits of which have been thoroughly documented in articles like this one, this one, and this one—to come their way."Hi, Is this breast milk still available for sale I need 150oz ASAP….I also want you to know that I intend paying with a certified check….If yes please get back to me with the final asking price okay? Kim"
Like Erin, Mario is planning on continuing his sales efforts despite not finding any success. Along with listing on Only The Breast, Mario and his wife are on the waitlist for Mother's Milk Cooperative, which has offered to buy his wife's milk for $1.00 an ounce instead of the $2.00 an ounce he currently asks for. "We have loans, and my wife produces more milk than my son will drink, so we thought we might as well take a shot at it. I was expecting we'd make three or four hundred dollars when we stared—we just had that much milk."A number of other sellers I reached out to through Only The Breast emailed me citing similar experiences. "I have nothing positive to contribute, as every single lead I have encountered has been a bogus request by kinky men," says one seller, who declined to be named, over email. "I have been contacted four separate times by a troll named Alan with numerous email accounts and aliases. Men appear to be contacting sellers for some sort of fantasy. I have had contact with several other non-legit scammers and men looking for wet nurses. Personally, it is of no interest to me who actually purchases the milk or what they use it for (bodybuilders typically), but I have yet to actually make a sale at all with a real person."I was expecting we'd make three or four hundred dollars when we stared—we just had that much milk.
Amanda had to work hard to form a trusting relationship with her now loyal clients, diligently answering questions and even taking drug tests to prove her milk is clean. "Some mothers ask a lot of questions and really grill me on my background," she says. "I had one mother make me go and take a drug test and be tested for HIV. She required paperwork. I was willing to do it because she paid me for my time. Then I also had that documentation for future clients so it kind of worked out for me as well."It's been wonderful, and the extra money definitely helps. There are still so many scammers; I just have to weed through them.
Most of the milk that does end up at hospitals comes from either non-profit milk bank organizations like the Human Milk Bank Association of North America (HMBANA), or breast milk bio science companies, the main two being Medolac and Prolacta. Neither of these options come cheap to the NICU: while HMBANA charges hospitals a processing fee of $4 to $5 dollars an ounce—a fee it tells Newsweek often doesn't cover its processing costs—Medolac and Prolacta charge hospitals up to $5.90 per ounce.Because of the need to carefully screen donations for diseases like HIV and hepatitis, there is currently limited infrastructure set up to allow mothers to donate breast milk to hospitals or the NICU directly. Yet, considering the millions of ounces of milk waiting to be given away for next to no money on Only The Breast, there is a noticeable lack of information available on the site explaining where women can donate excess unwanted milk, rather than giving it away for free to other users.Yet, with childcare costs skyrocketing and unpaid maternity leave the norm, the hopeful unregulated sale of breast milk in America has become a symptom of the abysmal benefits offered to new mothers in this country. A particularly unfortunate result of this is that new mothers—many of whom, like Erin, would be happy to donate milk if they could—end up having to hoard their breast milk in freezers, fending off trolls named Alan in the hopes of finding an unconventional way to support their new families.*Names and locations have been changedRead More: What to Expect When You're Drinking While Pregnant