Mum with 'insane' pumping skills breaks world record

She may have had a hard time breastfeeding her own four kids, but Amelia Boomker has helped feed thousands of other people’s babies.(canvas prints photo on canvas canvas prints online)

Between 2008 and 2013, the mum from Bolingbrook, Illinois, donated almost 483 litres of breast milk to the Indiana Mothers' Milk Bank in Indianapolis – enough for her to recently take out the Guinness World Record for breast milk donation.

Boomker said she’s proud she’s been able produce plenty of milk for both her own children and those of strangers.

“We joke that there was probably a wet nurse somewhere in the family tree,” the 36-year-old told TODAY.com.

The donated milk is pasteurised and then given to babies in hospitals in and around Illinois, with premature and ill infants in neonatal intensive care units getting priority treatment.

Boomker has donated enough milk to fill 4000 milk bottles - the equivalent of 241 2-litre bottles, or 2047 coffee cups - which have helped feed thousands of babies, said Carissa Hawkins, spokesperson for the Indiana Mothers' Milk Bank.

“It just so happens that Amelia … has some pumping skills,” Hawkins said. “It’s just insane.”

But all that milk doesn’t mean that breastfeeding was an easy act for Boomker and her four children, according to Today Moms.

Her eldest child, Danny, now 9, was born with a heart condition and had to be tube-fed. It meant Boomker spent a lot of time in the hospital’s lactation room pumping milk for her sick son.

Next, her son Liam, 6, had a high palate and couldn’t latch, while Ryan, 4, never took to breastfeeding. Connor, 18 months old, was only able to do it for a few weeks, but she continues to express three times a day for him.

But Boomker persevered, continuing to pump and donating any excess milk to the local bank – in fact, before breaking the current record she had donated 207 litres to another milk bank.

The IT worker says that consistency is the key to successful pumping, and she’s grateful that her employer is understanding and flexible about her activities, as she pumps in a lactation room on site a few times a day.      

Boomker plans to continue donating, and hopes that other mums are encouraged by her story.

“I hope that the record continues to get beaten because frankly that means much more milk is getting donated,” she said.