Sure, some mothers might want a memento of their breastfeeding about as much as they’d like to re-experience labor contractions. But for many, it’s an unforgettable experience that brings them closer to their newborns, and for those women a 34-year-old mother of three has figured out a way to “materialize” that memory.
Allicia Mogavero, of southern Rhode Island, makes breast-milk jewelry that she sells at the online store Mommy Milk Creations, on the craft site Etsy.com. For $64 to $125, she’ll plasticize a sample of your breast milk and mold it into miniature shapes — hearts, moons, flowers or tiny hands. The milk beads are then set into a pendant of the your choice. The final product is a keepsake of your body’s liquid gold that you can wear “as a badge of honor” or perhaps give to your children when they are old enough to not be totally skeeved out by it.
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According to the Daily Mail, Mogavero can barely keep up with the orders. Mothers around the world are sending her their breast milk in sealed bags; her waiting list for final products is now eight to 10 weeks long.
Mogavero has quite a lot of competitors on Etsy.com. One of them, Hollyday Designs, claims that it’s the original creator of breast-milk penchants and that it’s been making the unique keepsake for more than a decade. Another seller, milkmombaby, offers kits that allow moms to preserve their own breastmilk for $22 to $38.
And there are other ways to save your bodily ambrosia. According to Yahoo Shine, Sara James of Houston handcrafts soap bars made of olive, coconut, lavender and a dose of breast milk. She sells them for up to $60 on Etsy’s TinRoofSoapCo Shop. And in 2011, a New York University grad student used human breast milk to make cheese and offered adventurous eaters samples at a New York gallery, noted Reuters. Earlier that year, a London store calledThe Icecreamists began selling ice-cream made from human breast milk. According to the Guardian, you can buy the frozen treat — named, horrendously, Baby Gaga — for $23 per 10 ounces.