- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Babies: 0 - 3 Months
Help, all my thawed BM smells awful!
Okay, I thawed some BM last night so DH could do all the night feedings to give me a break. The milk was less than a month old and was in a regular freezer (not deep freeze). It had this awful, strong metallic smell and tasted bad too. I threw it out and tried thawing some from a different day, and it was the same-- what is going on? Is it a problem with my freezer? My refrigerated BM doesn't smell like this. I would hate to throw out all my frozen milk...
Thanks for any advice!
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Help, all my thawed BM smells awful!
Does it smell like something in your freezer? Sounds weird, but sometimes when something has gone bad in our freezer it taints all the other food. Other than that, I have no idea.
BTW, I discovered your blog the other day and you are hilarious!!
Hmm, I will have to sniff everything and see. That would make sense.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked my blog!
I hate to be the one to bring bad news - but you may have an excess of lipase in your milk. ?They usually recommend that you freeze and thaw some milk before building a big freezer stash to check for this since it requires scalding the milk before freezing.
One thing to try though is to make sure you are thawing the milk slowly - like in the fridge overnight and see if that is the problem.
Info from kellymom.com:
https://tinyurl.com/zrdorThat does not sound like a fun solution. And thank you for posting this b/c I never knew about this.
Somewhat, but it usually isn't a problem unless the baby is only getting thawed milk.
Also, JARbaby had mentioned that she thought her thawed milk was bad because she wasn't cooling it first before freezing. ?Try freezing some tonight using kellymom.com's storage guidlines and see if it is bad when you thaw it tomorrow!?
I didn't know you had to cool b/f freezing. Normally I do, but not always. Hmmmmm...
Awwww!!! ?Hang in there! ?BFing got a lot better for me around 2 months. ?
I have seen a few posts on here about the lipase thing - which is the only reason I know about it. ?It is so sad to hear about these HUGE freezer stashes being thrown out! =(
I had to throw out 75 oz. of frozen milk because of this.
Mine smelled kind of soapy and just nasty, and dd would have nothing to do with it. I'm assuming I have the lovely lipase "issue."
So, I scald all of my milk before freezing. It really isn't as annoying as I thought it would be, and as pp said, as long as this isn't all they are getting, it's fine as far as the benefits of bm go. DD takes this milk just fine.
I pour the milk into a saucepan and heat it until it's just bubbling around the outside, then I pull it off real quick (don't wait until it's fully boiling in the middle). Then, you are supposed to cool it quickly, so i put the pan in the fridge on a hot pad for about 10 minutes, then pour it into the freezer bag (I don't like putting hot milk directly into the plastic bag).
I know this sounds like such a hassle, but it's really not that bad at all - it only takes a few minutes for the milk to scald.
I had to finally convince myself to quit thinking of breastmilk as "gold." It just stressed me out way too much to get so upset over losing any milk. That has helped me a ton, and I just shrug it off if I have to waste some. Last night, I accidentally brought 8 oz. all the way to a rolling boil, so I had to dump it. I just have to tell myself that it's not worth getting upset over it.
Sorry, this got way long and I'm sure it's way more than you wanted to know!
GL!