I keep hearing about how some womens milk turns rancid in the freezer and doesnt taste right when defrosted. How many of you scald your breast milk before freezing it? Or did you just start builing up a freezer stash and hope for the best that it would tatse fine when defrosted? I also heard that scalding does reduce to antibodies in the milk
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Whether you need to scald the milk depends on whether your milk breaks down quickly and whether baby minds that difference in taste.
I defrosted mine a bit after freezing it to test it out and baby never minded the taste, so we never worried about it.
http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/lipase-expressedmilk.html
If you look towards the bottom she explains the excess of lipase in milk (which breaks down fat) can be a reason to scald the milk first. I've never heard of anyone IRL having to do this so I don't think it's that common to have an excess. -
same as maysprout. thank goodness i didn't have to scald since pumping alone is work enough!
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@Maysprout: actually my friend had excess lipase, but it didn't bother her son (she tasted it). i think it does exist for some people, but babies just don't mind.
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@Mrs. Bee: True! My milk does actually taste a little different from the freezer but not soapy like kellymom describes so maybe I have a bit more than some people but LO never minded so it's at least not an excess for her tastebuds.
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I haven't done that. In fact I've never heard of doing it. I have been fortunate enough to not use much of our supply yet but now I'm wondering if she'll been fussy while eating the defrosted milk. I'll have test it out.
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Mine tasted gross (to me) after refrigeration or freezing, but (THANK GOD) LO never minded.
I feel like for the next kid, I'd probably test this out really early (I definitely plan on doing at least one bottle of pumped milk per day starting from the very beginning) because if I had to throw away a whole freezer stash I would probably cry for weeks. -
@Mrs. Bee: How long does the milk have to be frozen before this happens to it? I plan to defrost some milk after a week maybe and test it out on the baby. I'm wondeing if a week in the freezer is long enough?
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I hadn't heard of this. I'll just be winging it. I've got two small bottles in the freezer now, and they're probably all that's going to be there for a bit unless I can get my milk supply up.
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@Mrsbells: For me, one night in the freezer was enough to have a major impact on the taste/smell.
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@Lozza: oh ok so it doesnt have to be frozen that long then
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Yep. I have excess lipase and even after one day in the fridge or freezer mine tastes like soap. Liv doesnt seem to mind, but I could NOT feed it to her like that knowing how gross it tasted. I had a freezer supply built up before I went back to work, but I dont use that, I pump at work for the next day. On Fridays I scald my milk and freeze it until Monday. The rest of the week its fine since its only there for about 12 hours or so.
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Mine was fine frozen and defrosted, thank goodness! Pumping etc was enough of a process!
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Hmmm, never heard of this- will have to try defrosting a bag and see how he likes it. That would suck it he won't take any of the stash I've built up already!
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I tested my milk for lipase. Little Jacks started refusing my frozen milk for a while and I was devastated. (I had a fair stash built up!)
Turns out that some soap residues can cause a bad taste to the milk, so we tried to make sure there was no soap residue in the pumping equipment plastics and everything was ok!
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@Mrs. Jacks: it's amazing how attached you get to your pumped milk! I almost cried in the first week when my MIL washed dishes and dumped out 5mL of pumped milk (to her defense, she didn't know, and had never breastfed or pumped).
Thanks for the heads up about the soap residue!
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I noticed that a bottle of day old expressed milk smelled "off" this morning...my LO still drank it but I'm worried about my freezer stash.
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@lemondrop: I completely lost it when I went through the potential lipase crisis! I was seriously unhinged until we got to the bottom of it!
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We have thawed one bottle of frozen milk, and LO didn't seem to mind it... but now I'm going to thaw another and taste it!
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I tasted mine. DS has no issues with it after frozen and the baby I donated mine to doesn't have a problem with it either!
@lemondrop: You do get so attached! I screened the family I donated my milk to (asked them questions about themselves, why they wanted donor milk, etc) and cried after dropping it off. I know it was for a good cause and at least I didn't have to dump it down the drain, but it was still upsetting.
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I noticed a lipase problem early on and now I scald my milk before freezing. My son would take the defrosted milk, but he didn't seem to like it and never finished a whole bottle. So I smelled the milk, and it definitely smelled funny. It's not hard to tell if the milk is off. Scalding is not so hard, it only takes about a minute in a small pan. It does get rid of some of the good stuff, but since my son gets fresh milk every day it's no big deal.
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@anbanan15: So does that mean you had lots of breast milk that your baby never got to drink? You must be lucky since so many women seem to have supply issues. Whats your secret? lol
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@Mrsbells: kinda. I donated 1,110 oz when DS was 7 mo (and yes I counted and organized each oz). He had a rare form of food allergies so everything I express while eating one of his triggers we cannot use which at the time was our entire freezer stash. We have a decent size stash again (DS is 10 mo), but we will most likely be donating it again.
I'm not sure why I'm able to express this way but am thankful I can. I'm on a very limited diet and yet my supply has not really suffered. I have found keeping a good amount of fats in helps (go me that is oil). Quinoa also provides a little boost these days and when I tried coconut manna that helped significantly but DS ultimately could not tolerate it.
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