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June 2011 Moms
Pockety
member
breastmilk storage - need a chest freezer?
Pockety
member
Do any of you store lots of breastmilk in a normal freezer?
I have about 80 oz frozen in my freezer - seems like a lot, but really that's only 3-4 days worth, and less as LO gets older. I don't have any more room to put more in my freezer though, unless I drastically reduce how much food is in there (and not much is in there now!)
Do those of you who are storing frozen breastmilk mainly have chest freezers? How big a chest freezer do I need? I live in a 2-bedroom condo without much extra space; the space that would work well really only has room for one of the small 3.5 cu. ft. freezers. Will that fill up too quickly? I could otherwise get one of the tall skinny ones, but it wouldn't look very nice, and from what I hear, they're not as good, because the door opens to the front, rather than a true chest.
What do you ladies do?
Finally updating my signature and avatar, August 29, 2011 (better late than never!)
Jake! (born July 3, 2011 - 6 days past due)
December Siggy Challenge: Favorite Holiday Movie
December Siggy Challenge: Favorite Holiday Movie
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Re: breastmilk storage - need a chest freezer?
I got a 5 cubic ft chest freezer in June. It is already completely full of BM. So is half of my regular freezer. I had a second freezer delivered this weekend. It is a 7cubic ft freezer. So now all my BM is in the garage and my inside freezer has space for food. I wish I would have gotten the 7cubic ft one in the first place. When they are both full I am going to donate some milk.
PS remember 2 things.
1. BM last way longer in a chest freezer than the regular one you go into several times per day.
2. You can always get a chest freezer cheap on craigslist. My 7 ft one was 6 months old and it was $60. I paid her $15 to deliver it. New it was $180 @ Lowes. The 5 cubic ft one is $140 at Lowes I think??? Mine was a gift.
You can store breastmilk in a normal refrigerator freezer, but it won't last as long as it would in a chest freezer because the temperature varies more in a refrigerator freezer than it does in a chest one. How long your milk will last depends on where in the freezer it is, how cold your freezer remains on average and how often you open the freezer door. An LC told me that if you keep ice cream in your freezer and it's hard when you scoop it out, your milk is good for up to three months. If ice cream stays soft in your freezer, it wouldn't last that long. (I can't vouch for the veracity of that advice, but it seems to make sense.)
I bought a chest freezer a couple of weeks after I'd gone back to work with my son because I was pumping more than he needed and we were fast running out of room in the fridge. We got a 5 cu. foot chest and it was plenty big enough, but I never got above 400 oz.
If you're not expecting to store vast amounts of breastmilk and you're rotating through what you've frozen on a regular basis, I wouldn't worry about buying a chest freezer.
I only pump here and there, not every day. My regular freezer was jam packed with regular food and BM.
We just bought a chest freezer. 3.2cubic ft. it's in the garage. Since I only pump the 2 days a week I work and every so often after that the 3.2 should be fine for us. If I get to where that is full I will donate.
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