With regards to freezing breastmilk, do I need any special bottles or can I use the bottles I normally pump into? Are there any bags or bottles better than others?
Generally, what is a good amount to separate out-like in what quantities?
And how long can the milk be in the fridge before I put it in the freezer? Or does it have to be freshly expressed milk?
5 Answers
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I was quite happy using breastmilk storage bags.
The Ameda website says that you can keep milk at room temperature for up to 10 hours, at which point it can be kept in the fridge for up to 8 days, after which point you can still freeze it .
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I thought that for storing breast milk you could do 8 hours at room temperature OR a week in the fridge OR 3-4 months in the freezer OR 6-12 months in a deep freeze freezer.
After I pumped, I would immediately put the milk in the fridge and then every day or two (depending on how much I was pumping), put it in freezer bags and put them first in the regular freezer for a couple of days (just to freeze flat) then move them to the deep freeze.
I like the Lansinoh bags best. They have two zip locks to help prevent spills. They were also pretty good at freezing flat. I would stack them so the zip parts stuck out alternate sides which gave more stability to the stacks. I did hit a patch where a bunch of bags got little rips (not sure how because they were obviously fine when I put in the milk) so I got in the habit of thawing them in ziplock bags so I didn't waste a bunch of milk when they thawed.
In most of the bags I stored 5-6 ounces, then I did some 2-3 ounces, then I got the special ice cube-like trays for making 1-ounce cubes. That seemed to minimize bag use plus give me what I needed for daycare, whatever that amount was.
Since many daycares toss out whatever is left over after a single feeding, I tended to send in lots of bottles with 2-3 ounces each. Also, the bags I left there were the small ones.
If you are pumping a lot of milk and don't think your baby will use it all, you can donate it to a breast milk bank. I donated to the Mother's Milk Bank in San Jose, but I know there are banks all over the country. Right now, milk banks are collecting extra for Haiti.
Not sure if this is typical, but I pumped *way* more in the first few months than I did later, so I stored up a ton of milk then. If you get a good stash going, make sure you rotate the milk you use so the old stuff doesn't go bad. I would take shoe boxes and date them and fill them with milk, then take out the earliest shoebox I could find.
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I really liked the breast milk bags made by Lanisoh. There's a place you can write the amount and date. I would save approx. 4-5 ounces in a bag. Lay them flat in the freezer. Once you have a bunch frozen, place them into a bigger zip lock bag. They're really easy to defrost under warm/hot water.
I didn't like the bags that Medela sold. The part that was supposed to easily tear away never did and I always thought I'd rip the bag.
La Leche League's website has good information on storage times and other helpful advice for breast-feeding. Good luck!
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I recently purchased some "milk stick" trays that allow you to freeze breastmilk in one ounce "sticks" (a long and skinny ice cube). The tray is super flat (low profile), which is nice if your freezer is relatively full. Because you freeze milk in one ounce increments, you can vary the number of ounces you put in a bottle, depending on how much your infant is drinking that week. I also feel better about using trays because I'm consuming less single-use plastic. The trays are BPA free and hold 8 ounces. Once I fill a tray, I transfer the sticks to a zip-lock bag for storage. The sticks are skinny enough that they supposedly work with all bottles.
Good luck!
-julie
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The comment about cycling the oldest frozen milk is very important. One thing that none of these milk bag companies seem to mention is that some women produce higher amounts of an enzyme (lipase) that breaks down milkfat and that this enzyme may mean that while the milk is still fine for consumption, it tastes so terrible that the child won't touch it. There's no way to find out, except doing a storage test and making sure you taste test or sniff test the milk. When the enzyme is the culprit, the milk will be spoiled with a strong metallic, soapy taste. So my milk lasts untreated about 2-3 days in the fridge, and 3 weeks in the freezer. There are women whose milk starts tasting funny way sooner than that. The way to deal with it is to scald the milk before storing it, so the heat breaks down the enzyme. Once the bad taste is there, there's nothing you can do to remove it.
(I cried when I had to throw out about twenty bags of frozen milk that had been spoiled by this enzyme in the freezer)
So bags are sort of secondary in my mind - it's more important to check that your milk will store well in the first place.
