Can this milk be saved?

ProcrastinatingBride · January 2012

I accidentally defrosted ~1 oz more than what I needed for DD's bottles today, so I have a random ounce of defrosted milk in my fridge right now. It's been thawed since last night.

I know the rule of thumb is 24 hours for thawed milk; has anyone ever fed thawed milk 36 hours later? I would love for it to go into her first DC bottle for tomorrow (so it would be about 36 hours old by the time she drank it), but I don't want her to get sick or anything. Plus she doesn't take 1-oz bottles (obviously), so I'd have to mix it with fresh, and, if it was spoiled or she refused it, then the fresh would need to be discarded too.

Of course, I could put it into a bottle tonight and give it to her, but I always prefer to nurse her directly when we're together rather than give a bottle, so I'd probably lean toward throwing it away if feeding it tonight was the only other option.

Thoughts?

Matt Dvorak · January 2012

In that situation, I would just dump - but I tend to be conservative with the rules.

I generally do not have that problem because what I do is aim to have half my milk be thawed, and the other half fresh (pumped within the past day or two and in the fridge) on a given day. If I thaw a bag that I saved too much milk in (as I did when I first started pumping, not realizing that my LO would drink 4 oz at a time), I will then use all of the thawed milk, and less fresh. Then, I can save the extra fresh milk for the next day.

During the day I freeze half and put half in the fridge. Sometimes on Fridays I end up with enough fresh that I don't need to pull out any frozen the night before. Nothing goes to waste now that I have this system in place.

ProcrastinatingBride · January 2012

lincolngirl:
In that situation, I would just dump - but I tend to be conservative with the rules.
I generally do not have that problem because what I do is aim to have half my milk be thawed, and the other half fresh (pumped within the past day or two and in the fridge) on a given day. If I thaw a bag that I saved too much milk in (as I did when I first started pumping, not realizing that my LO would drink 4 oz at a time), I will then use all of the thawed milk, and less fresh. Then, I can save the extra fresh milk for the next day.
During the day I freeze half and put half in the fridge. Sometimes on Fridays I end up with enough fresh that I don't need to pull out any frozen the night before. Nothing goes to waste now that I have this system in place.

Thanks.

This is an interesting idea; I've never thought of doing half and half every day before. I usually use thawed on Mondays and fresh the rest of the week just to keep the stash rotating.

For the last month or so, I've been freezing in 4-oz increments because that's what size bottles DD takes. The milk for today was frozen before I figured that out, so it was just in a bunch of odd increments. I defrosted more than I needed on purpose, because I noticed that I lose a bit in the thawing process (some clings to the inside of the bag, I guess, so I get a little less than I think I'm getting). So I did defrost a bit more on purpose, but I overestimated how much more I'd need.

Oh well. I'm just glad it's not more than ~1 oz.

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