Tara Overton on low supply, letting go of the plan, and why donor milk isn’t just for the NICU

Tara Overton went into motherhood as a self-described planner. She had a birth plan, a feeding plan, a schedule. And then her son arrived — small, colicky, and hungry — and none of it held.

What made her experience especially layered: Tara had spent years running a donor milk bank, sourcing and distributing human breast milk to NICUs across the country. She knew, intellectually, that some moms don’t produce enough. She just hadn’t expected to be one of them.

Now, as COO of Ni-Q and MaiaMilk, Tara is working to make the same donor milk that has safely nourished premature infants in hospitals for over a decade available to families at home — in the form of freeze-dried breast milk packets. In this episode of The Motherly Podcast she sat down with Liz Tenety to talk about the pressure moms face around feeding, what it actually takes to get donor milk safely from one mom’s body to another family’s diaper bag, and the one thing she tells herself — and her kids — when things get hard.

Meet the expert

Tara Overton is the COO of Ni-Q, which has been supplying donor human milk to NICUs and hospitals across the country for over a decade, and MaiaMilk, which makes that same standard of rigorously screened donor milk available to families at home in freeze-dried packet form. She had both of her sons — now 7 and 9 — while working at the company, and was a low-supply mom herself.

Liz Tenety: If you could go back and give your pre-motherhood self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Tara Overton: To try to be more flexible and give myself a little more grace. I’m a planner — I like to have everything mapped out. But there was so much I couldn’t plan for, or that I didn’t even know was a possibility. I wish I’d been able to take things as they came and be okay when they didn’t go according to how I’d mapped them out in my mind.

Liz Tenety: You came into new motherhood having worked in the donor milk world. What was that experience actually like?

Tara Overton: It was really brutal. My pregnancy was great — I kind of had this idea that my body knows what to do, it’s doing this. And then the second I went into labor it was chaos. My son was really small and he wasn’t eating enough. He was colicky. My milk didn’t come in on time, and there was never enough of it. So it was this really stressful, overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. My body did so good growing this baby, and then it felt like it quit.

“Struggle doesn’t equal failure. It’s just the struggle — and it will get better.”

Liz Tenety: How did working around overproducing donors shape how you felt about your own supply struggles?

Tara Overton: I think it gave me extra pressure, honestly. I was seeing day to day these moms with so much extra milk — and when I didn’t have enough even for my own son, it felt a little extra rough. But it also gave me so much gratitude for those donors. It made me look at them with even more awe, that they could have the capacity to feed their own babies and still be pumping and storing and doing all that work to donate their extra milk too.

Liz Tenety: How does MaiaMilk actually work — from donor to packet?

Tara Overton: It starts with our donors, who are overproducing moms. They go through a rigorous lifestyle and medical screening, plus blood testing, to become approved. Once we have milk from them, it goes through rigorous testing before it’s ever accepted into our facility. Then it goes into production, where it’s freeze-dried — we’re trying to remove water while retaining as much of the beneficial properties of human breast milk as we can. Then it’s packaged into what look like little sachet packets, and it goes through a third round of testing after production. To use it, you just mix the powder with warm water.

Liz Tenety: How do you talk about the benefits of MaiaMilk without adding to the pressure moms already feel around feeding?

Tara Overton: That is so important to me. I don’t want to contribute to the shame or guilt that already exists. This is just another option — if it works for you and your family, great. If it doesn’t, that is completely okay. I just want moms to know it’s there. If having a convenient packet of freeze-dried breast milk gives you 30 minutes to do yoga instead of pumping and makes you feel a little more calm and present in your day, that’s a huge win. And if it’s not the right fit, you’re still doing awesome.

“If this isn’t the right fit for you, you’re still doing awesome.”

Liz Tenety: Who else is MaiaMilk for beyond low-supply moms?

Tara Overton: I think of it as a bridge product for so many situations. When you’re still in the hospital and your milk hasn’t come in yet — I was like that, it took a full week. Or if you haven’t had time to pump and you need to leave a couple packets with grandma. Throwing it in a diaper bag on an airplane, where all you need is warm water. And for families built through surrogacy or LGBTQ parents, there may already be fewer feeding options available, so having one more tool can really matter.

Liz Tenety: What do you want a mom who’s struggling to hear right now?

Tara Overton: That it’s okay. That struggle doesn’t equal failure — it’s just the struggle, and it will get better. There are resources and options available, but it’s also okay if things don’t feel perfect or didn’t go according to plan. You just keep doing your best, and your baby will be okay, and you will be okay.

Liz Tenety: You have a go-to phrase for hard moments — what is it?

Tara Overton: Five minutes. You can do anything for five minutes. When my first son was really little and I was in the thick of it, I went to the pediatrician and she said take it one day at a time. I wanted to scream — I can’t get through a day. She said one hour. Still too much. So I told myself: five minutes. You might feel better in the next five minutes. You might not. But it’s only five minutes. I say it to my kids all the time now too. Just five minutes, buddy. We’ll see what the next five bring.

This article has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen to the full episode of The Motherly Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.