I hear a lot of moms create a freezer stash of breastmilk, but then I also hear that it doesnt taste so great once it's defrosted. I'm personally not a fan of defrosted food, The only food I have in my freezer are foods that are meant to be eaten frozen. I'm curious is there anyone who skipped the freezer stage and only fed directly from the breast or from the fridge?
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I was never able to actually keep a stash. If I knew my mom would babysit, I would simply pump but not freeze and give her the milk in the bags.
Depends on your production as well. Moms who produce a lot might not have a choice to freeze if not you'd have to throw it out and trust me when I say breastmilk is like liquid gold... you don't want to waste 1 drop of it.
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I only feed from the breast. Going on 7 months and 2 weeks!
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If I were a SAHM I wouldn't have frozen any milk. Alas, I am not and needed to make sure there would be plenty of milk for my son if I had a bad pumping day when away from him.
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you can exclusively breastfeed if you're a sahm and never need to be away from your lo for long. for working moms that provide pumped milk, most have a freezer stash because you can only store milk in the fridge for about a week.
charlie usually drank milk that was refrigerated and not frozen, but i built up quite a frozen stash that i used when i had drinks and had to pump and dump.
not all frozen milk tastes bad... it depends on the lipase level in your milk which varies from mom to mom, and that can be eliminated by heating your milk before you freeze it. charlie never had a problem with my frozen milk though.
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Thanks for the responses!!
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I don't have enough milk to freeze! I have plenty to feed my LO but never have excess even though I'm taking fenugreek. But because I'm on mat leave for a whole year, it doesn't matter for the time being.
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thanks for this post... I was wondering about this too. I am a SAHM and just don't want to deal with freezing, defrosting, etc... if there's no urgent reason for it. Thing is though, I think I fed from the breast so much that she now hates bottles. I'm supposed to be practicing with the bottles, but it's annoying since I'm busy enough (also have a toddler). Giving from breast is just too easy for us. It does mean that she is pretty much with me wherever I go...
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Here is the reason we froze milk. Sometimes we go through a lot of pumped milk (either with DH helping with some night time feedings or taking LO out or staying with others) and sometimes we have a good chunk of time where we are together and no pumped milk is needed.
Refrigerated milk is only good for 4-6 days. Any time we had extra it was just easier to freeze it and no worrying about it spoiling.
So yes it's totally reasonable to think that you can pump without having to freeze but there might just be times that you have to feed a bottle before it goes bad or worse throw it out if it's in te fridge too long.
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I had no idea you could freeze breast milk! This is awesome, it means my SO will be able to get up for some nighttime feedings.
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I'm a SAHM and have never fed my LO frozen milk. When he was younger I fed him bottles of milk (that I pumped during the day) for his night time feedings. He ate faster that way, which meant more sleep for us all.
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I pump when I'm at work and my son has that (refrigerated) milk the next day. I freeze any extra but actually have never had to use any of it because I always pump enough for him to just have it fresh. I'm actually trying to figure out what the heck to do with all the frozen milk that we'll never use, but it's looking sadly like it will end up in the trash
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@ohapostrophe - you can start going through your frozen stash so that when you decide to wean, you can prolly continue giving breastmilk for some time by relying on your frozen supply?
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@OHAPOSTROPHE: Not sure if you would want to, but you can donate!
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@bee- you're right, I should probably think about that!
@boogs- I would love to, but milk banks won't take it because I had a blood transfusion after delivery. I've looked into private donation but it seems kind of complicated.
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