If you are lucky enough to make more than what your baby needs you may find yourself needing to freeze or donate the milk.  Even if you donate milk, often times you will still freeze what you have so you can donate a larger amount at one time.  When I donated I gave out about 2 weeks’ worth of milk at a time.  My first time I breastfeed I froze some milk in the first month or two, but after that I had supply issues.  My second time I learned a lot and was able to donate hundreds of oz of milk and freeze enough so I could stop 4 months before my baby turned 1.

Frozen Milk

• Frozen breast milk takes up a lot of space in the freezer, if you want to freeze to quit early you might need a chest freezer.  You can also donate if you run out of space.
• Lansinoh stacks the best in the freezer, they say 6 oz for markings however according to the markings on Dr. Brown’s bottles I filled 6 ½ to 7 oz per bag.
• Some babies don’t take to frozen milk (both of mine did so I never had any issues), the milk does taste different when frozen.  Before going too crazy freezing milk give your baby some to see if they like it.  Some mom’s find that they can pre-treat the milk with bringing it to a boil.
• Once frozen be careful, the plastic is thin and they tend to rip easily.  The bottoms of the bags are where the majority of the rips I find are, however if tossed around I’ve found larger cuts in the bag anywhere.  Due to this, when thawing out place in a bowl or cup so you don’t lose the milk.  I find about 1 in 10 or 20 bags leak.
• Boxes or some use paper bags can help organize milk in the freezer.  If you aren’t freezing a lot a zip lock bag works great too.  With my first time pumping I used a zip lock as I had supply issues, but with my second child I used boxes due to the shear amount of milk I stored just didn’t make since to put in zip locks.
• When you thaw out the milk, what I find works best is to place the milk in the fridge the day before.  I typically put the milk in the fridge at the same time I put the thawed milk in bottles.  After 24 hours in the fridge the frozen milk is mostly thawed, and I can easily tell which bags have leaks.  The bags without any leaks I run under hot water until the ice chunks are gone.  Sometimes I will set in a bowl of hot water.  The bags that leak I will pour the milk into a measuring cup. If there are ice chunks I try warm up so they fit into the bottle, then use that as the last bottle of the day.

I hope you enjoyed my series on Pumping/Breastfeeding.  If you haven’t checked out the previous posts yet please do so, Getting Started, General Information, Increasing your Supply, and Traveling all included good information.

My youngest will be 1 soon and I don’t plan on having any more children.  I’m sad to be moving out of the pumping/breastfeeding stage, but very excited to move onto new challenges of parenthood.  My next posts will mostly be around Toddlers, so far I’m finding that much more challenging!