would you use warm breast milk again?

[aussiegal]

I remember being told that once you've heated milk you've got an hour to give it to the baby (whether they've started drinking or not). Heating the milk makes bacteria multiply or some such. I treat my ebm as liquid gold but always follow this rule.

 

[LLL_Sarah]

The guidelines keep changing as more and more research is done on the subject.

20 years ago the guidelines said to only keep expressed milk for 24 hours because this was the longest anyone had tested the milk. Now they have tested the milk for seven days and the guidelines say that you can keep the milk up to seven days. Maybe in the future they will test the milk for two weeks and then the guidelines could change again. After all they did find that after seven days the milk had fewer bacteria in it than when first pumped.

Likewise I only know of one research (quoted by joannek by Brusseau) that looked at bacteria levels after the baby had drunk from the milk. The guidelines are usually only changed when a second or third research project gives the same results.

In the past people thought of breast milk in a similar way to formula and so assumed it would go off as quickly - I think this is the reason that they started with 24 hours, then increase the guidelines to 48 and now it is at seven days. 20 years ago no one even considered that breast milk would last so long.

But it is important to remember that formula is a dead liquid and so it is easy for the bacteria to increase, especially when kept at a warm temperature (bacteria love warmth).

Breast milk, on the other hand, is a living liquid and the anti bacterial agents and antibodies in the milk keep working even after the milk is pumped out and stored. I believe it is these agents in the milk that make the bacterial counts so low even after the baby has drunk from the bottle and the milk been stored again. And remember the milk already has the antibodies for the bacteria that the baby has in his mouth.

Some of the protective agents in the milk are destroyed when the milk is frozen and so the guidelines state to use any defrosted milk within 24 hours.

More and more mothers want to continue breastfeeding and mix this with expressing and giving pumped milk to their babies. So I foresee more and more research on the topic of stored breast milk. I think that the guidelines are likely to change again in the future.

Best wishes,
SARAH