Do you rotate your freezer stash?

The_Birds_04 · July 2011

Please tell me your process. I dont want my frozen milk to go bad but cant decide if I should work it in with fresh milk daily or just wait and use it before it expires all at once.

paramedicswife · July 2011

I haven't started back to work yet, which is when I'll really start rotating my freezer stash into bottles. I've read that your milk changes as LO gets older (I don't know how true that is) so you should rotate your stash out & freeze new.

For example, I've been teaching at Bible School this week and DS has stayed with either DH/in-laws every night. He's drinking 4 oz at a time so I took out around 12 ounces from my oldest dated milk in the freezer, thawed it and separated it into 3/4 bottles and added enough fresh milk to make all the bottles 4 ounces. I don't know if that's the "correct" way, but it worked for me.

JDoe11111 · July 2011

yes, your milk changes, but milk from early infancy is still "better" than formula.

fresh milk is "better" than frozen, once milk has been frozen it breaks down some.

when you "rotate" a freezer stash generally you take out frozen to use, and replace it with fresh that you freeze...so your kid is eventually getting 2X as much frozen, and you are using 2X the freezer bags (if that is how you freeze). I knew I was pumping till 6 months and would then use my freezer stash, so it wouldn't go bad, so I chose not to rotate.

Just started using the frozen at 6 months (using it up as we ease in to formula), everything has gone well so far this month.

mrambo3 · July 2011

Yes, I rotate it. Now that I'm back at work this is what I do:

Monday bottles for daycare are directly from my freezer stash (oldest date right now is middle beginning of June). Then Monday-Thursday pumping during work is the next day's bottles for daycare. Friday pumping at work will go directly into my freezer stash when I get home. If for some reason he needs a bottle during the weekend (I try to nurse him all weekend and not give him a bottle), I will grab a bag of frozen BM. Right now I'm not too worried about rotating though because in September we have a wedding in Vegas and DS will be staying with my parents so they'll need 4 full days worth of BM (~120oz).

QueenNini · July 2011

Does your DS go to a DCP? You can send one or two frozen bags and one or two fresh bottles of milk. So you are always taking the oldest milk and still putting fresh milk in. I send a big bag of frozen milk to my MIL (she watches my LOs) and on the days I pick the kids up I leave whatever I pumped that day, so he gets fresh and frozen

klvd · July 2011

mrambo3:

Yes, I rotate it. Now that I'm back at work this is what I do:

Monday bottles for daycare are directly from my freezer stash (oldest date right now is middle beginning of June). Then Monday-Thursday pumping during work is the next day's bottles for daycare. Friday pumping at work will go directly into my freezer stash when I get home. If for some reason he needs a bottle during the weekend (I try to nurse him all weekend and not give him a bottle), I will grab a bag of frozen BM. Right now I'm not too worried about rotating though because in September we have a wedding in Vegas and DS will be staying with my parents so they'll need 4 full days worth of BM (~120oz).

This is what I do too. Use frozen BM on Mondays, then fresh throughout the rest of the week. I freeze what I pump on Fridays. Nurse all weekend and start all over again!

mamababyrn · July 2011

I EP and give about 24 oz of frozen/week. The bottles I give with frozen is always half frozen, half fresh milk. I pump about 16 oz more than LO eats in a day. I am rotating my stash because I hope to give her BM for a year, but be able to stop pumping before that.

katlizabeth · July 2011

I will, and I did with ds. I just froze all the fresh during the week and used the oldest milk from my freezer for bottles. I figured he was getting "fresh" milk during all my other nursing sessions.

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