Alyse Ogletree would love it if she could donate immense amounts of money to all sorts of worthy causes, but as a mother raising three young children, that’s not something realistic. So the 36-year-old from Flower Mound, Texas, has found another way to fulfill her philanthropic instinct: giving away a record amount of breastmilk that officials estimate has been enough to nourish hundreds of thousands of premature babies.
“I have a big heart, [but] at the end of the day, I’m not made of money and I can’t give away money to good causes over and over because I have a family to support for,” Ogletree said in an interview recently published on Guinness World Records’ website. But “donating milk was a way I could give back”.
Ogletree spoke to the Guinness organization – whose database of 40,000 world records has long been a source of fascination – about how in July 2023 she set the mark for largest individual donation of breastmilk by an individual: 2,645.58 litres.
It was her second time clinching the achievement. She also captured the Guinness mark in 2014 by donating 1,569.79 litres.
Ogletree began carving out her unique place in the record books by combining her desire to assist others with her realization that she was producing an unusually large amount of milk after her first son, Kyle, now 14, was born in 2010.
A nurse at the hospital where Kyle was born told her that she could donate the extra amount to mothers who wanted to feed breastmilk to their babies but were struggling. Ogletree told Guinness: “I ended up donating everything I had saved up to that point.”
She decided she would do the same not only after the births of her two other sons – Kage, 12, and Kory, seven – but also upon acting as a surrogate mother.
“I think I was just as excited about donating again as I was to be growing my family,” Ogletree told Guinness.
Ogletree, an executive manager at a commercial truck manufacturer, said she first sought recognition from Guinness when she saw a news article about another mother having set the mark at the time – then calculating in her head that she could surpass it within three months.
She explained that she has never been diagnosed with any condition that would explain the level at which she produces breastmilk, saying she believes a focus on hydration as well as a healthy diet have helped.
Remarkably, only donations to Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas have counted toward her total. But she said she has also donated an additional 2,000 litres to another milk bank – Tiny Treasures – as well as close friends in need.
She said Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas told her that every litre of breastmilk donated can feed 11 premature babies. If that is accurate, “I’ve helped over 350,000 babies” with the amount donated to that specific group alone, she reportedly told Guinness.
Ogletree said that she wanted to use the spotlight the Guinness record afforded her to highlight how women may be in a position to aid mothers and their babies without realizing it.
A statement from the executive director of Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas, Shaina Stanks, said her institution was left “astounded and inspired” by how Ogletree had delivered “an incomprehensible amount of surplus breastmilk to fragile infants”.
“Her life-saving efforts are an undeniable testament to her extraordinary generosity and compassion,” Stanks’ statement added.
