Frozen Assets: Protecting Your Freezer Stash of Breastmilk

Nature's plan for thousands of years is to produce milk as needed and deliver it immediately from the breast to the infant seamlessly and efficiently. But the advent of personal electric breast pumps and deep freezers in the home in recent decades has allowed breastfeeding mothers to store quantities of expressed breastmilk "on ice" for planned or potential future use.

However, like all frozen foods, expressed breastmilk is vulnerable to loss through power outages, mechanical breakdown or accidental thawing. So it is important to have a plan in place to protect your precious supplies.

It is important to understand that most families do not require litres of frozen breastmilk. At most, a few feeds "just in case" will be enough. But for families whose babies are fully expressed breastmilk fed, women who donate excess breastmilk and for those planning a buffer against their return to paid work, substantial volumes of breastmilk might be stockpiled.

Plan for worst case scenario:

Some potential defrosting incidents can be anticipated and prevented. You might store your "stash" across multiple freezers using homes of family or friends as well as your own. Avoid having all of your eggs in one basket, as it were. Even in your own home, consider a second or dedicated freezer for your breast milk.

Explore technology for protection. This could include portable generators for power outages, alerts and alarms for freezer breakdowns or doors left open and even simple childproof locks to prevent older children accessing the freezer. Smart home technology can be useful, from cameras monitoring the freezer to motion sensors letting you know if the door is not fully-closed. Weather alerts on your phone can let you know if storms are active in your area so you can plan for potential power outages.

If you are out of, or away from, your home for significant periods of time, you might enlist a neighbour or friend with a key to your house to act on your behalf. If you are notified of the temperature rising in your freezer, you could contact them to investigate for you.

When Disaster Happens

If you discover your freezer has failed and your frozen breastmilk has completely thawed, you cannot refreeze it. The milk needs to be used immediately (if still cold: 5 degrees Celsius or lower for less than 72 hours) or discarded. This is heartbreaking, of course, when so many hours have been invested in collecting your milk. However food safety guidelines apply to human milk, just as they do to other foods and it is simply not worth the risk. Infants are especially vulnerable to food poisoning and it can be life-threatening.

If discarding your breastmilk is an overwhelming situation, consider asking a friend or family member to do it for you. Pouring your milk down the sink - particularly if you are no longer lactating - can be traumatic. You might like to talk to a breastfeeding counsellor or other trusted person about your experience.

Caught In the Act

If you catch things in time, there is a chance you can salvage your milk.

If your freezer was very full and your containers of breastmilk were tightly packed with each other or other frozen foods, there might be some insulation slowing down the thawing process. Look for remaining ice crystals within the individual bags or containers. If a plastic storage bag still holds a solid mass of frozen milk and is inflexible, you can probably return it to a freezer. Otherwise, you might need to open plastic containers to visually assess the state of each batch.

If other foods stored in the freezer are still solid, that can guide you. Check softer products like icecream - if these have become liquid or very soft, you might want to be cautious.

The location of your stored milk within the freezer can also make a difference. Milk stored at the back and lower down will stay colder longer. Food stored in the doors of a freezer are most likely to thaw quickly if the door was left open.

Refreezing quickly will be important for milk you decide is safe. If there has been a power outage, your neighbours are likely to be in similar circumstances, so reach out to family and friends in a different location if possible. As soon as you can, transfer all the rescued milk into one or more portable coolers like an Esky or chillibin. Even insulated shopping or lunch bags will help slow down thawing. If you have nothing like this available, your bathtub, sink or other container lined with blankets or quilts and covered by more will trap the cold while you make arrangements. Turn heating off or lower as much as possible and turn on air conditioning to bring room temperature down.

The door of the freezer is the least cool space and milk will warm more quickly

Would you like breastmilk with that?

If you find yourself with thawed breastmilk which is still safe to use, you have a limited time before you need to discard it. Breastmilk thawed in refrigerator conditions needs to be used within 24 hours. Breastmilk thawed at room temperature needs to be discarded after 4 hours. If you don't know when the trigger incident occurred (eg. When the power went out or the door left open) discard the milk: its not worth the risk.

If you are still pumping for your baby, feed them the thawed milk and freeze the milk you are expressing. If you are mixed feeding with formula as well as breastmilk, replace all formula feeds with the expressed breastmilk.

Older children can have "special" smoothies or milkshakes with your thawed milk. Some people make traditional dairy foods like custard or icecream with human milk instead of animal or plant milks.

Thawed breastmilk can be added to bath water or even made into natural skin care products like soap or balms.

If this breastmilk has sentimental value, you might like to consider refreezing it , carefully labelled not for consumption. Colostrum expressed before or after pregnancy and/or breastmilk remaining after can be treasured by mothers and keeping it can maintain a connection. You can keep this as long as you need but do separate it from milk stored for feeding your other babies.

Breastmilk can be made into mementos like jewellery pieces and this can be a comfort after the loss of irreplaceable frozen milk. In Australia beyond the willowtree provides this service.