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Working Moms
pumping question
I'm going back to work jan 5th - DD will be 3 months old.
I have about 80 oz in the freezer - is that enough? My plan is to send the oldest milk to Day care and then pump while I'm at work - and then freeze that so that we don't have milk go bad - anyone else do this?
any other hints?
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Re: pumping question
Unless you are in an unusual situation (such as lots of planned business travel), you really don't need a huge freezer stash before going back to work. See https://www.workandpump.com/freezerstash.htm for why.
Of course, it's nice to have for insurance purposes, and 80 oz is great!
When you say that you plan to send the "oldest milk," do you mean the oldest refrigerated milk, or the oldest frozen milk? If it's the latter, I wouldn't recommend that -- freezing milk kills off most of the immune properties that make breastmilk so special, so you want to use refrigerated milk as much as possible.
What I usually did to ensure that my freezer stash stayed fresh was rotate in maybe 10-15 oz of thawed milk each week, and froze some refrigerated milk to replace it. That ensured that none of my milk "expired" while still allowing the bulk of DD's diet to be refrigerated milk.
Mommy to DD1 (June 2007), DS (January 2010), DD2 (July 2012), and The Next One (EDD 3/31/2015)
I'm sure it'll be enough unless like the pp said you are doing a lot of travel right off etc.
I only froze milk on Fridays if at all. I almost always just sent fresh milk from the day before...it's SO Much easier than worrying about thawing, etc. On Fridays I would freeze some and thaw some for Mondays to keep the 'stash' fresh but even that I didn't do all the time.
I had about 200oz when I went back, but I'm super paranoid! I've known other ladies that have gone through a lot so I wanted to make sure I had a good stash.
I basically send 1 bottle (sometimes 2) of frozen milk a day in order to rotate out my freezer stash. I just freeze whatever extra I have for the week. I figure that 1 or 2 bottles of frozen milk are no big deal considering DD is getting 1 other fresh bottle of milk and being nursed the rest of the day. She's getting plenty of fresh milk.
At 6 months my pumping output has started dropping so I'm not freezing as much as I am taking out of my stash. So my stash has been dropping. But since I have such a huge stash its no big deal. I figure if my output stays the way it is right now, I can still make it to a year with what I have in the freezer. If I can eventually get my output back up, then I'll use the freezer stash to let me reduce work pumping early.
80 oz is plenty. You may add considerably to the stash in the first few months of pumping. (mine grew from about 50 oz to several hundred oz when I was able to pump more than she was eating at daycare.)
As the frozen milk approached the 3month mark, I started rotating it by freezing what I pump on Friday and the weekend and thawing some for her bottles on Monday.
This is all great advice. I also recommend using your fresh milk. Frozen milk can last up to a year in a deep freeze. We're using up the last of ours now, even though DS is done BFing (he's 15 months). I had just over 100 oz when I went back to work and almost never tapped into it.
I just have my stash in the regular freezer so in order to rotate it out I do one bottle of frozen milk a day and the other two fresh.
I also had a huge stash when I went back to work and it has come in handy for traveling, nights out, and when I've had dips in my supply.
Thank you for all your great advice. I didn't realize the frozen milk was lesser quality. I've been pumping since October so I think I'll make sure that goes to day care for 1 or 2 bottles and then send the rest fresh.