BODY WATCH : A Gift <i> From</i> Mothers, <i> to</i> Mothers : Babies: Human-milk banking is popular once again, now that safety measures have reduced the fears of viral infection and the threat of AIDS.

Bridget Kelley-Dearing and Mary Marino have never met, never even spoken. Two women with boys born days apart in May, one lives in Alexandria, Va., the other in New York City.

But Marino has been feeding her son with Kelley-Dearing’s breast milk.

“I feel great, so proud, feeding another baby who needs the milk,” says Kelley-Dearing, who was producing more milk than her son, Liam, needed.

“It’s like a wonderful gift,” says Marino, whose newborn, Paolo, couldn’t suckle, had trouble digesting and vomited repeatedly. (Marino was pumping her breast milk, but she wasn’t producing nearly enough to feed the infant adequately, and Paolo rejected every formula he was offered.)

Paolo is one of hundreds of premature or sick babies across the United States who are being fed the breast milk of women other than their mothers.

Human-milk banking, after nearly being wiped out by the threat of AIDS, is enjoying a comeback as safety measures have reduced fears of viral infection. (In 1990, at the urging of the Food and Drug Administration, which monitors but does not regulate milk banking, a set of standards was drawn up on how to select milk donors and how to treat and store the milk.)

The Community Human Milk Bank at Georgetown University Hospital, which dispenses milk to Marino, expects to handle close to 1,000 ounces of milk next year, compared with a total of 152 ounces in 1992 and 1993. Nationally, more than 1,000 infants will receive donor milk from seven milk banks this year, up from a low of 600 in 1989.

All banked milk is donated, and milk banks make no profit from dispensing it. Safety procedures, however, have driven the cost of human milk up to $2.75 an ounce; because it can be obtained only with a doctor’s prescription, most insurers will pay for it.

Breast milk has been called nature’s most perfect food. Medical knowledge on exactly how it helps infants develop is still emerging, but doctors know that human milk is more easily digested than formula by some babies with fragile gastrointestinal systems.

Human milk also contains some proteins, which cannot be artificially produced, to help prevent infection.

“Human milk is the best choice,” says Nitin Mehta, a neonatologist at Georgetown.

“Whenever possible I try to use human milk, especially for premature infants. . . . We try to get mothers to pump their own milk. If that’s not possible, we have donor milk.”

Some physicians, however, doubt that donor milk is any better for premature infants than specially enriched formulas.

“There is a lot of religion about donor milk and not much solid study,” says Lewis Barness, a professor of pediatrics at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa. “I’m not sure how good it is.”

* The nearest bank for Southern Californians is at Mothers’ Milk Unit, Valley Medical Center, 751 S. Bascom Ave., San Jose, Calif. 95128; (408) 998-4550.