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Baby won't be with me for around 15 days.

Is it is safe to add fresh breast milk to already frozen breast milk?
If not, then how to preserve the daily extracted breast milk in freezer for a long time assuming I don't wish to use 8 different vessels (8 times extraction) per day multiplied by 15 (number of days)?

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What we were recommended, and found incredibly useful, was to use ice cube trays. Then once the milk has frozen in cubes you can put as many as you need into bags, clean and sterilise the trays and make another set.

This meant we could easily take the amount we might need for that half-day, day, weekend or however long.

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The guideline is that you can add fresh milk to frozen milk as long as the amount of frozen is greater than the amount of fresh you add. Otherwise you raise the temperature of the frozen milk into a risky range.

The usual strategy is to use breastmilk storage bags such as Lanisoh's, Medela's, Ameda's, or I am sure there are other options. Since breastmilk is good at room temperature for 8-10 hours and in the fridge for 5 days you can put your pump parts and a storage bag in the fridge for your daily pumping and then freeze those bags once the day is done.

Storing in smaller amounts additionally makes sense because once defrosted the thawed milk must be used within 24 hours rather than the usual 5 days that never-frozen milk can last in a fridge.

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Soem sites say that you can keep it freezed for as long as 6 months, as long they are in the freezer (source: http://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/milkstorage/milkstorage/)

How we deal with it:

  • use the pumper for several days, so that the baby wouldn't be out of food while we were saving it for the future

  • separate in plastic bags (don't know their name in english, not those you would get at a supermarket, but those ones used to freeze food), in portions of 50 ml. These portions can be used as needed, without the need of unfreeze a large amount and end up trowing it away afterwards

  • take care of writing down the date when each small packet was collected, so that you don't use an old one by mistake

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