Storing breast milk in ice cube tray - ?

papagena

How long would you allow it to sit in the ice cube tray before saying it's sat too long and it should be tossed?  Also - do you really just stick the cubes it in a ziplock bag?

Sassy_Cassie

I've never thought of doing that.

 

Sorry, no advice.

sophabelle

personally, i wouldn't store it that way.  i'd use the bags made for it, and you could just wash out the used ones and reuse them. 

the reason why i wouldn't store it that way is bc it would be harder to keep the milk separated by date, which is important as far as storage goes.. .unless you're going to store them in separate freezer bags per date... which would take up much more room in the freezer than bmilk bags frozen flat.  just sayin :-)

Dobie_Mama

2-3 days?  Before it grows freezer fuzz? lol

And crap I just remembered that there are greenbeans in an ice cube try in my freezer.

Mystery2B

I did this a couple times, I had it in the freezer maybe 24 ish hours? I put it in at night and took it out the next evening into the freezer bag.

My plan had been to store a week at a time in a freezer bag (labeled with that week). I ended up not doing this for more than a few days so that didn't come into play for me. I had thought I would use the cubes to make/water down puree's but ended up A) just squeezing some out when I needed it for something and doing more BLW and less pureed food. 

Valerie120408

I only do that with food for a day or two before transferring to a ziploc and use the milk storage bags for milk. If I were to do it with milk, I would move it the next day and start a new ziploc once a week.

shollinshead

For all of my frozen milk, I throw it in a silicone ice cube tray (almost perfectly 1 oz/cube) and cover w/ tin foil, give them minimum of 24 hours, and then store them in doubled ziplocs--I get 24 in each quart bag, and they store really compactly in big bricks in the back of the freezer.  I'll be honest that once or twice, I've left them in the tray for several days--maybe close to a week once.  I cover them very tightly w/ foil, though, and so I've never chucked any.  It may not be quite as perfect, but DD has never had a problem with the milk, and I just wasn't willing to let it go to waste.

Lotte134

I don't remember specifically worrying about how long it sat in the ice cube tray, but I also had the baby food ones that have lids.  Whenever I needed to or remembered I transferred to freezer bags.  I used the small bags and labeled it with the date of the oldest milk inside - that way there wasn't milk from 6 weeks in one bag.  I loved storing my milk like this because I never had the dilemma of how many ounces to freeze together and what if I defrost too much, etc... 

brandybarney

I am trying this ice cube tray method, but won't be needing the milk until I go back to work in January (it's November now)...how long have you left the milk refrigerated in the zip lock bags?