For about half a year now, Zhou Lin's baby daughter has been fed breast milk from six different moms.

Zhou, 33, gave birth to her baby in mid-November last year. However, soon she discovered her baby didn't like being breast fed; and having found this out, her mood became affected and she couldn't produce enough breast milk.

"She eats once every two hours, about 500 millimeters per day, whereas I can only give her about 200 millimeters," Zhou said.

Desperate, she sought online help. The day after Christmas, 2012, Zhou sent out a post on a parenting forum bjmama.com.

"For the kind-hearted moms out there, if you have extra breast milk that doesn't fit in your fridge, can you please dispense it to me?" she wrote.

Luckily, she received help from several moms. However, even though Zhou's issue has been solved, the situation of breast milk insufficiency is still an issue for many. On the other hand, some moms don't know what to do with the excessive breast milk in the fridge.

The first breast milk bank in China was recently established by the Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center. But in Beijing, the lack of a breast milk bank or other official organizations leaves the work of donation in the hands of the individuals and NGOs.

Twenty-nine-year-old Wei Linna participated in the process. When she became a mother last November, she quickly discovered a problem she hadn't thought of before.

"Our yuesao (nanny) thought that I should save the extra breast milk, so I pumped it out and saved about 2-3 bags per day, 500 millimeter in total," she said.

Soon, she had a fridge full of breast milk bags.

In February, she read a post from Little Flower Projects, a program that aids orphanages, asking for donations of breast milk. 

The Little Flower Projects provides services to abandoned children, and it has been calling for the donation of many goods and materials, breast milk included.

Wei didn't end up donating her extra breast milk to the Little Flower Projects because the program's fridge is full, but she donated it to the parents of twin babies she connected to through the bjmama.com forum.

For Wei, donating her breast milk caused family drama. "My parents and husband were unhappy when I donated," she said. They wanted her to save the milk for her own child.

Zhou's faced opposition from her husband too.

"My husband would rather feed our baby milk powder, saying using others' breast milk was a risky business, there might have been diseases the moms didn't even know about," she said. "But I insisted mother's breast milk had to be more nutritious, it had to be better than milk formula."

Dong Lifang, a gynecologist at the Jianye District Maternal and Childcare Service Center in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, said breast milk is the most natural food for children and has antibodies that milk powder can't imitate.

However, she warned with breast milk donation, mothers should watch out for diseases, such as syphilis, AIDS or hepatitis B, which can be carried in with the milk.

"You have to make sure the mothers have done medical exams," she said.

Resistance to the idea of a breast milk bank is widespread. The Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center did a survey before establishing its bank. Only 25% of moms were willing to donate breast milk, and only 18% were willing to receive milk from others.