Learn how to safely and properly store, refrigerate and freeze breast milk to give to your baby, according to the AAP. I also give you the guidelines for thawing and warming frozen or refrigerated the milk. Find more CloudMom videos on breastfeeding and caring for your baby.
Transcript:
The first thing you need to do is where you want to be freezing your breast milk. Some people freeze directly into these bottles, which are safe for freezing. These are by Medela. And some people buy breast milk bags. I actually prefer these I think they're easier than buying tons and tons of bottles. So my favorite bags are these Medela bags. And I think they're the best because they don't tend to leak and they're actually quite easy to pour into. And I'm going to show you how you can do that.
And when you're ready to freeze your milk, the first thing you want to do is you want to wash your hands and use a very good antibacterial soap and hot water such as this one. And then take your breast milk bag and write the date on it. You have to use a Bic pen, an ink pen won't work the information will sort of smear off and you won't be able to tell what date it is when you back to use the milk. So write the date first and then you're going to open the bag like this, your nice clean hands. And you can put your two fingers in there to just sort of open it up.
Then you take your milk and you just sort of slowly pour in your milk while holding your bag open. So you go like this, just slowly pour it in. You don't want to spill milk. And many a mom has in fact cried over split breast milk because this stuff is like liquid gold. It's a lot of work to create it so you want to make sure you don't spill it. So you just sort of even out the bag like this and then you just close the top, which is just basically, like a Ziploc bag like this. If a little spills out, you can just wipe that off before you put it in the freezer. So that's about it. Once you've gotten your breast milk into the freezer bag put it in your freezer in an upright position. These bags are pretty tight and they don't to leak, but you don't want to put them in sideways because they could leak and that's just not something you want to have to deal with.