The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is pleased to offer a state-of-the-art human milk management center within the hospital. Centralized fortification of human milk is an important strategy to provide optimal quality care to patients and to assure safety in storage, preparation, and distribution of fortified and pasteurized donor human milk for hospitalized infants. 

Trained milk technicians staff the human milk management center 7 days per week from 9am to 11pm. Fortified and/or pasteurized donor human milk orders are prepared twice daily with delivery times of 4p and 9p. The human milk management center provides fortified milk, skimmed milk and pasteurized donor milk as described below for hospitalized babies.

Fortified Human Milk

Infants and children with certain medical conditions may need extra nutritional support to meet their growth and development needs. Human milk is the preferred feeding and supplemental nutrients called fortifiers can be added to human milk to boost the calorie, vitamin, and mineral content. Trained human milk technicians add fortifiers to human milk using aseptic technique.

Skimmed Human Milk

Patients with a chylothorax or other lymphatic anomalies may require a low fat or fat free diet. The human milk management center has a cold centrifuge onsite to provide skimmed human milk. This allows the infants requiring a modified fat diet to continue to receive a human milk diet; with additional fortifiers or additives to supplement the calories and nutrients when fat is removed from human milk.

Pasteurized Donor Human Milk

Pasteurized donor human milk (PDHM) is available for all hospitalized infants within CHOP University City Campus. PDHM is obtained from the Mothers’ Milk Bank (MMB) within CHOP; a Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) accredited milk bank. PDHM may be used when a mom’s own milk supply is still being established or when a mom is experiencing a low milk supply. PDHM is only provided after caregiver consent is obtained.

Moms who find themselves producing more milk than their child needs — or in the case of infant demise (in the face of a devastating loss some moms find comfort when able to donate their milk to other moms and babies in need)— may want to consider becoming a human milk donor and donating their extra milk. Visit the CHOP Mothers’ Milk Bank for more information about milk donation and the screening process to become a donor.

Please Note

Services of the Human Milk Management Center are currently only available for infants who are hospitalized at CHOP. At this time we can not service outside institutions. We will update this page if expanded services are available in the future. Thank you.