Since I get quite a few searches about donat­ing blood while breast­feed­ing, I thought maybe I would talk a lit­tle more about blood dona­tion. I’ve already writ­ten about whether or not blood dona­tion is okay while breast­feed­ing (for most peo­ple, it’s just fine) and why I donate blood. Tonight, I thought I would write a lit­tle bit for those peo­ple who haven’t donated before and don’t know what to expect.

I know that nee­dles and blood tend to make some peo­ple ner­vous. Also, the unknown can make peo­ple wor­ried. Because I believe that donat­ing blood is very impor­tant, I thought I’d try to take away a few wor­ries for a few peo­ple. Here’s what hap­pens when I go to donate blood. First, I check in with the lady who greets me at the front desk. Then, she gives me some infor­ma­tion to read. Then, when they call my name, I go sit in a cubi­cle with one of the peo­ple who draws the blood. She took my tem­per­a­ture, my blood pres­sure, and pricked my fin­ger. She sticks a cou­ple of drops of blood from my fin­ger prick into a machine. This machine checks your blood for iron. Some­times, women find out that it’s hard to keep their iron count up high enough to donate.

Then, the ques­tions. Next, there are about 50ish ques­tions about any sort of ill­ness, risky behav­ior, surg­eries, or other issues that might pre­vent a per­son from being eli­gi­ble to donate blood. They used to read all the ques­tions and ask them ver­bally, but now they are all printed on a paper and I just read them on my own.

Now comes the time for the comfy chair. I tend to have bet­ter veins in my right arm, so I just go straight to that one. In order to take your blood, your arm has to be very well cleaned. First, they use an alco­hol wipe. Then, they use iodine. Then, comes the prick. Gen­er­ally, for me, that’s all it is. It’s a prick and a lit­tle bit of aching. I usu­ally get some sort of foam ball to squeeze. I tend to be a slow dona­tor, so when Jason and I go at the same time, he donates blood about 5 min­utes faster than I do.

After that’s all done, they put a band aid on your arm and feed you! Our blood dona­tion cen­ter has juice, donuts, pop­corn, and gra­nola bars. Also, if you like the snacks A LOT (like I do), if you sched­ule your dona­tion at the end of the day, they some­times offer you two snacks.

So, there you have it. It’s not quite as easy as “one-two-three,” but it’s def­i­nitely not as big of a deal or as scary as I’ve heard some peo­ple make it out to be.

A while ago, I wrote a post about donat­ing blood while breast­feed­ing.  Recently, I real­ized that it had again been a bit too long between dona­tions, and when I men­tioned that fact to a friend, she said that it was okay, because I have an excuse (mean­ing my two boys).  Yes, I do have an excuse for not donat­ing every 8 weeks, and some­times I use it, but I really don’t feel good about doing that.

When I was 18, I went to a blood drive and wanted to donate.  I had low iron, and I wasn’t able to donate.  I was actu­ally very upset.  I tried again a cou­ple months later, and I had my first suc­cess­ful dona­tion.  When I went off to col­lege, I decided to give it another try.  I found the blood bank at our local hos­pi­tal, and I made an appoint­ment.  Again, I had low iron and was turned away.  I worked hard to main­tain my iron count, and I tried again.  After that point, I was able to donate each time I had an appoint­ment.  In Jan­u­ary of 2000, I decided that I wanted to get my naval pierced (yes, this really does relate ).  The rea­son this was a big deal to me at the time was because after a pierc­ing, I was under the impres­sion that I would not be allowed to donate blood for 12 months.  Although, look­ing at the Red Cross’ web­site for eli­gi­bil­ity, it appears that is not always the case.  I’m not sure whether this is a recent change or if it’s always been this way.  This is actu­ally news to me.  So, get­ting back to my story, I decided to make one last appoint­ment to donate blood before I got the pierc­ing and had to take a year off.

The day after my dona­tion, I was sit­ting in the university’s din­ing hall with some friends and acquain­tances.  I was wear­ing my new blood dona­tion t-shirt I had received the day before, and out of (seem­ingly) nowhere, this guy I didn’t know very well at all says to me, “Thank you.”  I asked him, “What?  Thanks for what?”  He said, “Thank you for sav­ing lives.  Sav­ing lives like mine.”  Still con­fused, I just looked at him.  He said, “I see you have a blood bank shirt on, and you have a nee­dle mark on your arm.  You just donated blood, didn’t you?”  I answered that I had.  He showed me the back of his hand.  It was marked with sev­eral scars.  He then told me that he had a health con­di­tion that required him to get numer­ous blood trans­fu­sions to save his life.  I was really taken aback.  I donated blood, because I knew it was a good thing to do, but I had never known any­one to actu­ally need blood in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion.  He said, “So, any­way, I just wanted you to know that it’s peo­ple like you who save my life when I need blood.”  It was a very pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence espe­cially since the day that hap­pened was the day I had intended to get my naval pierced.  I chose not to do it that day.  I did, how­ever, do it a year later.  Reread­ing the story, I feel more than a lit­tle bad that that expe­ri­ence affected me only enough to delay my plans for a year.

I con­tin­ued to donate blood periodically/semi-regularly over the years.  In 2005, I got preg­nant, and I again stopped donat­ing blood.  After hav­ing K, I was nurs­ing and assumed, instead of check­ing, that I would con­tinue to be unable to donate.  I got preg­nant with A in 2006, and after he was born, I started to do a lit­tle research.  The research was prompted by a cou­ple things.  One, I had been a reg­u­lar dona­tor before my preg­nancy and nurs­ing days and I was anx­ious to get back to it.  The other thing was that a friend of mine had a baby just a month before A was born, and after her baby was born, she had a retained pla­centa.  Because of this, she lost a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of her blood, she had sev­eral trans­fu­sions, she had surgery, and she nearly died.  (Recently, another friend went through this same sit­u­a­tion but to a less sig­nif­i­cant degree.)  Again, hear­ing the story of some­one who had needed donated blood brought to my mind the impor­tance of donating.

I know that not every­one can or should donate blood.  That isn’t the rea­son for my post.  I don’t want any­one to feel guilty or pushed into doing some­thing that is not healthy for them.  How­ever, if donat­ing blood is some­thing you’ve been inter­ested in doing or some­thing you’ve done in the past but haven’t done for a while, I’d like to think that maybe this post is the lit­tle bit of incen­tive you’ve been wait­ing for.  As I said before, I’m past due for my dona­tion.  Jason and I had been using blood dona­tion time as a date, but we haven’t been able to work out (grand­par­ent) child­care to do it for a while.  I may have to just get over wait­ing for the per­fect sit­u­a­tion to present itself and make it happen.

When I was in col­lege and for the years after before I was preg­nant with K, I was a semi-regular blood dona­tor (is that a word?). In fact, Jason’s cousin tried to con­vince Jason that one time when Jason and I went to donate blood together was actu­ally our first date. It wasn’t by the way. I just didn’t want to go alone.

Any­way, after I had K, I was inter­ested in donat­ing blood again, but I had a hard time find­ing any infor­ma­tion on the sub­ject. Most of the infor­ma­tion I found said that it was allowed but it was a mom’s choice whether or not it would work for her. Well, that didn’t help me much. I checked on the La Leche League web­site and the Amer­i­can Red Cross web­site although it seems they have changed their lay­out and that infor­ma­tion is no longer avail­able. I found a few specifics, but I didn’t find a hard yes or no answer.

When I had A, I had a fairly sig­nif­i­cant over­sup­ply of milk after he was born and had to (and still have to) take steps to con­trol my sup­ply to allow him to be able to nurse with­out get­ting over­whelmed by the milk. Because of this, I felt more con­fi­dent in choos­ing to donate. I thought I would wait until he was 6 months old and tak­ing some solids just in case I did have a dip in sup­ply. Well, he’s now almost 8 months and not tak­ing solids. I just couldn’t wait any longer. In my absence from donat­ing, Jason has caught up to my dona­tions and sur­passed me! I need to get donat­ing again.

I made my appoint­ment, and the day I was sup­posed to go was –38 degrees with a –54 degree wind­chill. Need­less to say, I did not go that day. I just couldn’t jus­tify tak­ing my 2 boys out in that weather for any­thing other than an emer­gency. I resched­uled my appoint­ment and went the next week. I really didn’t do much to pre­pare ahead of time. I made sure that I was drink­ing extra water and eat­ing well the days before. My appoint­ment went well. When the woman put the nee­dle in to draw blood, she had a lit­tle trou­ble find­ing the vein. That resulted in me being a bit sore that night and the next day, but it wasn’t any­thing terrible.

I know that one person’s anec­do­tal expe­ri­ence doesn’t replace the advice of a doc­tor or lac­ta­tion con­sul­tant, but I hope it helps at least a lit­tle bit if this is a deci­sion you’ve been try­ing to make for yourself.