Two weeks ago Willa's own special milk bank was opened. I started expressing breastmilk and storing some of it in the freezer. I'm a pretty prolific milk producer and I think we have about 600-700mls in there so far. The frozen stuff is a back-up stash so that Morgan can feed her breastmilk via a bottle when I return to work.
Around the same time as I started stashing breastmilk in the freezer, Morgan began to experiment with giving Willa a bottle. It's far to say that it has been a challenge. Willa prefers breast to bottle and tends to have a wah before giving in and taking the bottle. Nevertheless we've had some success and Morgan has managed to get 100mls into her at a time (for you non-bottle feeders, this is a decent amount to get into a 5 week old). However, tonight the bottle was a no-go. There was much distressed wah-ing and no drinking. The difference tonight - the bottle of milk has sat in the fridge since yesterday morning (this is meant to be okay - breastmilk should be okay in the fridge for about 4 days). This led me to wonder, perhaps the problem is not the bottle, but the milk? The good people of the internet agree. Turns out that expressed breast milk can 'turn bad' and taste 'soapy, sour or rancid'. I tasted it - yep, very soapy tasting. No wonder Willa had a wah. The theory is that excess lipase (an enzyme in the milk) breaks down the fats which makes the milk taste unpleasant. And so now the science experience begins.
Stage 1: The plan is to express some 'fresh' milk tomorrow and see how she takes that. At the same time I'm going to take a sample of the 'fresh milk', store it in the fridge, and taste it at 2-hourly intervals to see how long it lasts before tasting bad. I'm hoping it's at least 12 hours.
Stage 2: Repeat Stage 1, but turn down temperature in fridge and place milk at coldest part of fridge.
Stage 3: Scald expressed breastmilk and repeat Stage 2. (The good people of the internet tell me that if I scald expressed breast milk before storing it in the fridge or freezer it slows down the lipase, so the milk will last longer before tasting bad.)
I remain bloody determined to exclusively breastfeed this baby after returning to work. So am crossing fingers that we can figure out some kind of solution to this milk issue. However, looks like my freezer stash will need to be biffed, and we'll need to start a new stash that is scalded before being frozen. Such is life.
6 comments:
We'll get there!
You can totally do it. Remember that your milk is different depending on what you eat, so don't just bin the freezer stuff, it may or may not suffer from the lipase issue (ie, I know a friend of mine who had the soapy milk issue, but def not all the time).
*fingers crossed* for you and the wee one (and the Morgue too).
BTW you looked at this website?
http://www.kellymom.com/
Lots of good BF etc info.
Thanks Giffy! Love the kellymom site!
Report on Stage 1: The house is quite as Morgan feeds Willa 2 hour old milk. So fresh milk works.
Test her on the frozen stuff (defrosted of course) sometime too. And see if it's different if it's allowed to defrost in the fridge or gently in the microwave (have you given in and got one of those?). Might be slightly different.
Isobel was happy with milk that had been frozen soon after expression (?) and defrosted in the microwave (shaken well to avoid the oft-warned-about "hot spots").
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