Amelia Boomker’s path to the Guinness Book of World Records began unknowingly nine years ago when her oldest son, Danny, was born with heart problems and could not be breast-fed.

Danny was given his mom’s breast milk through a tube for the first months of his life, but Boomker found she was producing more milk than her son could consume.

“I had all this breast milk frozen,” the 36-year-old Bolingbrook mother of four boys said. “They don’t have energy after heart surgery. I thought, what am I going to do with this?”

After talking with a nurse, Boomker began to donate the surplus milk to an organization in North Carolina that would send coolers for her to fill and mail back.

Nearly a decade later, Boomker has been named the world record-holder for the most breast milk donated, according to GuinnessWorldRecords.com.

Boomker broke the record by donating 16,321 fluid ounces of milk, 128 gallons, to the Indiana Mothers’ Milk Bank from 2008 through 2013 after the births of Danny’s three brothers, according to representatives from the milk bank.

Boomker, a technical analyst, said it was comforting to know that the “abundant blessing” of her excess breast milk would go to help others.

Technically speaking, Boomker’s record would be higher if the amount she donated for her oldest son back in 2005 was tallied, but she said she was not able to get to the medical records showing those donations.

“I would have another 7,000 ounces, but that’s okay,” she said. “I know this is a breakable record because I’ve broken it. And I hope more people break it. There’s definitely a demand.”

The breast milk is pasteurized after it is donated, and it offers a host of benefits to babies who are born prematurely, suffer from immunological deficiencies or have post-operative nutrition needs, according to the Indiana milk bank’s website.

It can also be a substitute for moms who can’t nurse their babies for medical reasons but still want their newborn to benefit from human milk, according to the website.

Human milk also helps protect immature tissue and promotes healing of infection-damaged tissue, according to the milk bank.

Boomker’s donation efforts resumed with the birth of her 6-year-old, Liam, who had a high palate and trouble latching to the breast, she said.

Liam drank breast milk from a bottle, and mom once again donated the surplus, although her second son was “a chowhound,” and she had less to donate than with Danny.

Boomker continued donating breast milk after the births of her third son, 4-year-old Ryan, and her youngest son, 18-month-old Connor.

Boomker and her husband, James, have a deep freezer in their basement, giving them plenty of storage space.

“It was more than they could possibly drink,” she said.

Donations were dropped off at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Park Ridge and then shipped to Indiana, Boomker said.

She said she was notified that her lactic altruism had gotten her into the records books on Feb. 28.

Milk donations received by the Indiana milk bank are delivered to hospitals throughout the Midwest, where it provides life-saving nourishment to critically ill newborns in neonatal intensive care units, according to Carissa Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the Indiana milk bank.

“Amelia’s donations helped save many young lives on the way to setting the world record,” Hawkins said in a release announcing the new record.

Boomker said her mother donated breast milk to a bank in the 1970s.

As a 15-month-old, Boomker said, she had an adverse reaction to a measles vaccination, and that breast milk helped her get better.

“It’s nice to know that I’m paying it forward,” she said.

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