Colorado woman sells breast milk online, doesn't get paid in full
A mother in Aurora says she lost hundreds of dollars when she tried to sell breast milk to another mother in need. She says that other mother took off without paying.
They made an agreement regarding the price online, but ultimately the mother Joslin Humphrey was just trying to help out a fellow mom and be kind.
Joslin says once she heard the other woman's babies crying, she knew they were hungry and trusted she would be paid via an online payment app like Venmo. Instead, the other mother she would pay her, but took off and never did. She got less than half of the money she was owed, now she is warning others to beware who they sell to online.
About a month ago, Joslin gave birth to her baby girl who was born prematurely at 34 weeks. The baby was on life support, but that didn't stop Joslin from producing great amounts of breast milk. So she decided to sell it.
"I quickly posted on a local moms group page on Facebook, I got a lot of responses -- I felt most connected to a mom who reached out and had twins that were seven weeks old," said Joslin.
She made an agreement with that mother to sell it for about 50 cents an ounce. It was a total of 1,200 ounces of breast milk, so she had to pay about $670. Instead she received about $285, and that was it.
"I brought all out and I asked her, do you have Venmo? PayPal? Cash? What works best for you? And she kind of told me she needed to work with her husband and see how it would be best to make the payment," said Joslin.
It's the first time she had experienced anything like this.
"I felt really bad because I thought maybe these twins needed the milk and she couldn't afford to buy them food," said Joslin on reasons why she did not pressure the mother to pay at the time.
She's sharing her story in hopes to warn other mothers about this and advising to be proactive about getting payment before giving anything.
"I pumped half of that milk when my baby was on life support, you never know who you're dealing with ... that was the last thing I thought was going to happen," said Joslin.
Joslin is still pumping milk and is now being extra vigilant of who she is selling it to. She says she just wants to help out good families who need the help.
The family did try to file a police report online, but they were asked for the other woman's license plate number and they did not have that information.
Police said there wasn't much they could do.
