Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017 / News 12 NBC 26 at 6 O'Clock

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) -- Alicia Fessler and her precious little boy, Cooper, have spent a lot of time in hospitals.

"He started to lose blood to the lower half of his body, and his organs basically were going into failure because they didn't have blood flow," Fessler said.

He was only five days old when they found out he needed open heart surgery to save his life.

"You feel so helpless when you're in the hospital watching your own little baby laying there and not being able to do anything for him," Fessler said.

So, she did the only thing she could: she pumped. That way, her breast milk would be available when her little one was finally able to be taken off IV fluids.

"It is a lot of work. Even though we weren't breast feeding, I'd still have to wake up in the middle of the night and pump," she said.

Now, her little one is seven months old with a clean bill of health, and this trip to Doctors Hospital is all about giving back.

She arrived loaded down with several coolers, all full of bags of frozen breast milk.

That milk will be shipped from Doctors Hospital to a milk bank to be tested, pasteurized, and shipped to hospitals across the country.

Sally Wood is a lactation consultant at Doctors Hospital, and she knows how important breast milk is for sick babies.

"The NICUS (Neonatal Intensive Care Units) that have the little babies that are really sick, they need this milk. It can be a difference between life and death for some babies. It really really can," Wood said.

"It's an amazing feeling knowing I'm helping someone else's baby when I felt so helpless sometimes," said Fessler.

And, she's not just helping one or two babies, she's helping hundreds.

So far, she's donated 2,648 ounces. That's 20 and a half gallons of milk.

"I knew it was a lot of milk because we had a big deep freezer full but when you hear the actual number and you think about a gallon of milk at the store....it's a lot," she said.

A lot of milk and a lot of work, but when she holds her own healthy baby in her arms, she knows, it's a donation that means more than words could ever say.

Doctors Hospital has been accepting donor breast milk for about a year now, but Alicia's donation doubles their record.

If you're interested in donating, call Sally Wood at 706-651-6515. She'll walk you through the process of becoming a donor.