Sunday, October 17, 2010

If it isn't chickens, it's feathers.

News item: Jack won't drink my breast milk after it's been frozen. I probably have excess lipase.

Shit. This spells trouble.

I have nearly 80 oz of expressed milk stored in the freezer, and I have no reason to think that the milk we tried this morning is any different than the rest -- it's probably all bad. I should have known better and tested my milk before stocking up, but why would I give Jack frozen milk when there's always a surplus in me, and in our refrigerator?

Fortunately I still have a bit of an oversupply and I think pumping will go OK... but there will be days. The bottle will tip over. They'll toss perfectly fresh milk because of state regulations. The daycare will need some frozen milk for him and there won't be any. I assume they'll make us give him formula in those times (we certainly can't let him be hungry).

What to do?!

I should add in an extra pump session during the day to be sure of having enough milk for him (great, 120 minutes every day instead of 90 minutes every day). Supposedly scalding milk deactivates lipase enzyme; I can bring the milk to a simmer, then freeze it. Presumably the scalding will also denature all of the lovely antibodies, too... But it'll be a better solution than giving him regular bottles of formula, which can alter the intestinal flora of a breastfed baby after even one bottle. If I'm going to go to so much effort to breastfeed Jack while I'm working, I'd like him to have 100% breast milk.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Rach, not sure if this will help, but Audrey was particular about how the milk was de-frosted, and she definitely preferred fresh milk, so maybe not all hope is lost. Maybe try de-frosting slowly, that helped us... Also, I thought excess lipase would show up in refrigerated milk to, but I'm not sure. Good luck, I'm sure you will figure out a solution! -Erin

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