A Florida mom has started raking in the cash by selling her breast milk online. After 32-year-old Julie Dennis gave birth as a surrogate mother in August 2019, she pumped breast milk for the new parents for the first six months. However, once the child was weaned, she found herself with a bit of a surplus and decided to embrace her entrepreneurial side.
- She sells it for 90 cents per ounce. The milk goes to families who are also raising a surrogate baby and moms who have new babies but can’t or prefer not to breastfeed on their own. Given that babies can drink up to 30 oz. per day, that ends up being pretty lucrative for Julie.
- It’s basically a full-time job. As Julie explains, producing, pumping, bottling/bagging, and organizing so much breast milk takes a whole lot of time and as she’s a primary school teacher, that means she’s busy pretty much 24/7.
- Not everyone thinks she should be charging for the milk. However, Julie disagrees. After all, her body is producing it naturally, so why should she let the opportunity go by? “I have a perfectly good uterus and perfectly good milk so I may as well use it. It’s not completely money orientated but I make sure it’s worth it for me and my family,” she explained to Mercury Press. “I get comments that shame me for asking for compensation for my time spent pumping, because a lot of people think it’s free for me to make so why would I charge for it. I spend hours a day hooked up to my pump daily, which is time away from my family. There’s time spent cleaning, bagging and sterilizing all of my pump parts between each use.” Fair enough!
- She doesn’t think she should be giving it away for free either. While many people believe she should simply donate it to families in need, Julie makes a good point. “I wouldn’t go into the store and assume I can get free formula, so it baffles me that people expect free breastmilk.” She added: “Even charging one dollar per ounce, I get paid less than minimum wage once you add up all the time spent on it. That’s not to include replacement of pump parts every six to eight weeks, the cost of bags, the cost of the sterilization units and four different pumps that I use. It is a lot of work to exclusively pump and it is a labor of love.”
- She’s using the money to build her savings. “For the first six months or so I just used it in addition to my income from work to pay bills and manage my household,” she said. “The last six months I have just tucked it away in a savings account for a rainy-day fund. Ihaven’t done anything cool with it, unfortunately – just built a little savings account.”
Julie pumps out 15,000 ounces per month and even gets odd requests from potential clients 😳🥛
— LADbible (@ladbible) October 16, 2020
