Texas Health Fort Worth Onsite Milk Bank

Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth is adding an onsite milk bank – the first of its kind for Texas Health -- adjacent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

The Texas Health Fort Worth NICU cares for more than 600 babies every year. Whether the length of stay lasts hours or stretches on for months, having a baby in the NICU can be an emotional and overwhelming experience. With the new milk bank, Texas Health is hoping to ease that burden for our NICU families.

Currently, families must take time away from their infants to check in their milk, which is a lengthy process and can be fraught with challenges for parents whose first language is not English or Spanish. Knowing that our NICU families’ first concern is spending time with their babies, the milk bank will streamline the process for banking milk and get them to their baby’s side more quickly.

Not only will the milk bank streamline the process for families, but it will for the staff too, allowing more of their time to be spent caring for the precious little ones and helping the families learn to care for their newborns.

For families with babies in the NICU, centralized human milk banking and preparation is considered best practice by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization, and it is essential to providing quality care to infants.