How Can You Store The Breast Milk For Your Infant

Your breastmilk is the safest and healthiest intake for your toddler. Fresh breast milk keeps your infant away from a number of illness forms. The benefits of breastfeeding are way more than the basic nutrients. Women who work late or who are away from their baby most of the time prefer storing their breast milk and use it to feed their child. Women can also use this method while they buy abortion pills, store the milk before administering the pills and feed their baby during the process.

The procedure:

A breast pump is a mechanical device that extracts breast milk. You can use the same pump to store the freshly extracted milk immediately after collecting it. You can follow the below instructions for storing breast milk. When you want to use the milk can be a determinant factor in deciding how you want to store milk.

• Your breast milk can be kept at a room temperature i.e. up to 25°C. With this, you can store it for six hours maximum.

• The alternate options could be a cool box with ice packs. Breast milk preserved this way lasts up to 24 hours.

• If you can not breastfeed your child for a long time, the best way you can preserve breast milk is by keeping it in a freezer. When you preserve breast milk this way, it is likely to last for a week, it is advised to use it within 3 days to ensure fresh and safe feeding.

Freezing milk can lower the nutrition amount that helps fight infections. That being said, frozen milk is always a better option than other fluids.

Precautions while expressing breast milk for your child:

• Wash your hands before you express breast milk.
• Use sterilized containers and unused plastic bags.
• Put a date on each bottle so that you use the old one first.
• If you’re using a breast pump, clean it with hot water and soap, wash it carefully to ensure safety.
• For the avoidance of bacteria in every possible way, maintain utmost cleanliness in the whole process.

Mixing two batches:

If you are planning to mix the freshly extracted milk with the one collected before,

• Make sure that the milk was extracted on the same day.
• Before adding in it in the old batch, cool it carefully while you mix the two batches.
• The perishability of the milk will be based on the earlier batch.

Normalizing the frozen breast milk temperature:

• Although some babies like the chilled milk, if you do not want to feed your child this way, you can simply keep the milk out for until it gets back to the normal temperature.

• Defrost it in the refrigerator itself.
• If you’re in a hurry, the sealed container can be kept in warm water.

Don’t!

• Don’t keep the container full. Your breast milk expands when kept in the fridge. Keep a gap.
• Don’t put the milk in the microwave to warm it up.
• Don’t Refreeze the milk after it is thawed or taken out.

Women may notice that their milk often separates after storing it. Women get frightened to see their milk getting separated, however, it is not an unusual thing. You can stir it and resume feeding.  Storing the breast milk and using it later makes it much easier if the mother cannot be with her child all the time. The method is in practice for quite a decade with new ways coming to make the process better and easier for women.