Collecting, storing and freezing breast milk
If your breastfeeding goals include continuing to breastfeed after
returning to work or intermittent bottle feeding, it's important to find easy
and convenient ways to collect, store, and freeze your breast milk. After all,
breast milk is a precious commodity and you don't want to waste it.
Recommendations for storing and thawing breast milk
- Room temperature: 4-6 hours at 19-26°C.
- Refrigerator with 3 frozen ice packs: 24 hours at 15°C
- Refrigerator: up to 8 days at 4 degrees C
- Freezer: up to 12 months at -18°C
In to the freezer
In many cases, the milk you collect goes straight to the freezer to be frozen and then thawed and warmed up for your baby at a later time. Keeping frozen breast milk in order is a difficult task, and all too often parents rummage through the freezer for buried breast milk bags. With its compact, space-saving design, Freeze offers a solution to breast milk storage problems. Freeze is a first-in-first-out storage system that fits in the freezer. Collect breast milk from any storage bag and place it on a metal quick-freeze tray. Once the milk is frozen, slide the bag into the top Freeze slot - your breast milk bags will be protected until you're ready to use them. When you need to warm milk, remove the bag from the bottom of the freezer - this ensures you use the oldest milk first.