06/18/2026
Another shipment of milk going out today…
I wish that I could simply replay the conversations that I get to have with the families we serve. That’s the only way to truly communicate what Third Strand means to so many.
I start off every conversation by asking them to tell me their story. Each one is unique, but they always circle back to feelings of guilt, despair, desperation, uncertainty, and frustration surrounding the inability to provide breast milk for their baby.
Next, I share our story. I get the chance to tell every single person about my sister. I explain the “why” behind Third Strand, and explain our process in detail.
What comes next is typically tears…tears of relief, tears of overwhelming joy, and tears of gratitude. You see, people think that Third Strand just ships milk around and feeds babies, but the truth is that we fill a void. Our donor moms give more than milk…they give peace and calm to a storm.
Here is Julianne’s story:
“I got married at age 31.
The goal was to buy a house and then have kids. The American Dream. At age 32 we bought a house in the suburbs. Just as we were going to start trying for children, Then covid happened March 2020.
We put the plan for children on pause a minute. I had a birthday in July. In September I noticed a lump in my breast and October 13, 2020 at age 33 years old I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. An aggressive form of breast cancer.
A young healthy person one day just not. I went into my first surgery within 48 hours of diagnosis which is not typical. I met with the IVF clinic within those 48 hours and after surgery began IVF. Then after IVF, got a port put in for chemo drugs, started chemo of 6 rounds, had another surgery and then radiation. So from October to July this was my life.
I did cold capping to save as much hair from falling out as possible and help with regrowth. I drove with my dad into town all the time for treatment. Which during treatment is very exhausting. While in the hospital getting treated I had to be so careful not to catch something else like covid, while covid was at a peek. I wore two masks and dodged every person possible which wasn’t an easy task.
The one thing that kept me going was that after all this was over we would use a surrogate to have a child. I finished treatment July 1, I met our surrogate on zoom in October from a facebook group.
We began the process- transferred in March 2021 and had our child in the fall of 2022. We just kept moving forward.
When our son was 2.5 we decided we wanted another child so we asked our surrogate if she would carry for us again.
Not only have the doctors said I shouldn’t carry my own children but that producing my own breast milk through induced lactation is not an option for me because of my breast cancer history.
So the only options I have are to pay over $1,000 per order to the milk bank or use formula.
The craziest thing is I do not have a breast cancer history in my family. It just happened. I was pretty fit.
Getting this at 33 right when about to start a family is hard. But now I’m 38 and expecting our second child.
This journey has left me with the inability to breastfeed, and it has crushed my heart.
Third Strand has become such a relief I can’t even put how much it is into words. It just makes me cry because I literally can’t do it myself or I would and I know how important it is to not do only formula for baby.
The act of donating milk and providing it for free makes me feel so supported and so happy. It has put me in a situation of not having to make an impossible choice of having to choose formula or go into debt buying crazy expensive milk from the milk bank.
I am so thankful for Third Strand and all of the people that make it happen. It is such a blessing to me and so many others. It is simply beautiful.”
Thank you to all of our donor moms, our financial supporters, and our amazing partners at Milkify for making this impossible idea work for nearly ten years!
