Houstom power outage and breastmilk

01272007

Hey Everyone,

Our power was out last night for 6.5/7 hours. I am guessing I need to throw out my breastmilk stash in the freezer. What do you think? 

Also - do folks have a generator? Where do you get one, how much does it cost, how do you use it, etc? I am originally from Southern California so never really had to deal with this stuff growing up.

MMS2007

if the milk thawed out, you should use it within the next 24 hours or trash it.  you can't refreeze it.

we do have a generator, i don't know how much it cost, but my dad's one of those super hand guys and actually set it up so all we have to do is connect it to some main line in the garage and then set the breaker box so it runs certain parts of our house.  like determined light sockets and the fridge.  we haven't had to use it, but purchased it after hurricane ike and had him set it up.  (my dh isn't one of those handy guys, thank god for my dad)

somethingchangd

Our power was out for 10 hours last night, but we kept the fridge/freezer closed so I am assuming everything stayed cold enough.  I'd definitely thaw some and smell (taste?) it before you trash it.  It takes awhile for a closed freezer to warm up.

cali_girl92504

No answer on the BM but I agree with Somethingchanged about thawing and smelling one before tossing the whole stash.

We do have a generator and I think we got it on sale for $399 - the cost goes up the bigger the generator is. I can't remember the minimum it is recommended to get but we researched after evacuating for Rita and bought one a few months later to prepare. 

CareBear01

I did a quick google search, and based on this link: https://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09357.html, it says a closed freezer would take a day or 2 to actually thaw.  If that is the case, I think your stuff would have been fine just 6-7 hours.

jen5-03

Ideally, when the power comes back on you should go poke at it and see if it's thawed or not. I realize that's not helpful if it comes back on at 2am though.

You can also get a freezer alarm which will go off it the temp goes above a certain temp.

Annkiwi

Check your ice. If it the cubes have melted down you've have thaw. But you should be fine. (I have an extra fridge in the garage without an icemaker but keep a cup of ice in there for this purpose when a breaker flips or we have an outage - even if it's up and running again you can see if water melted down and re-froze in the bottom of the cup).

kreeper611

6-7 hours wouldn't cause it to thaw enough that you'd have to defrost and use/toss it.  You should be fine.

We don't have a generator.  I feel like normal power outages can happen anywhere or anytime.  In the instance of a hurricane we would probably either plan to evacuate and take things we need with us or we'd borrow one.  You could look into getting one - but 6 hours is less than the time you'd be away at work.  If my power went out 6 hours during the day I'd probably never know how long it had been out and wouldn't worry about it.