How long can you keep expressed breast milk before drinking it? How should you store it correctly?

Nowadays, the average maternity leave is within three or four months, and some people take about half a year. However, because they have to go back to work too early and have babies at home, the simplest way is to freeze the breast milk for storage. During the storage process, care must be taken to ensure that the breast milk is consumed by the baby within 24 or 48 hours, otherwise the breast milk will have deteriorated and the nutrients will be destroyed and cannot be consumed.

What does breast milk storage mean ?

Breast milk preservation, as the name suggests, is the practice of expressing breast milk and preserving it elsewhere. Nowadays, many working mothers, even full-time mothers, have the habit of storing breast milk. When the baby is not around or cannot be fed regularly, it is necessary to express the breast milk and save it for the baby to drink.

Storing breast milk sounds simple, but there are many things involved in the actual operation, such as the breast milk storage time, breast milk storage temperature, breast milk storage container and the specific scientific method of breast milk storage. These are issues that cannot be ignored. Only by strictly controlling the storage time, temperature, and methods of breast milk can we ensure that the milk the baby drinks is healthy and beneficial, and can play an effective role in the baby's growth and development, and even in enhancing the body's resistance and immunity.

How to store breast milk

As a working woman who has just become a mother, you will face a difficult choice after maternity leave: should you continue to breastfeed your baby at home, or return to the workplace to continue working? Faced with this dilemma, many people encourage new mothers to preserve breast milk and feed their babies. If you express and store breast milk the day before going to work, the baby can still drink nutritious breast milk even if the new mother is not with the baby the next day. Here, how to preserve breast milk has become a topic of concern for mothers. What are the specific methods for storing breast milk? Let’s take a look.

1. Prepare a breast pump and milk storage equipment

Breast pumps and milk storage utensils should preferably be made of plastic products that are suitable for freezing and well-sealed. It is not recommended to use glass and metal products as they will affect the nutritional activity of breast milk.

2. Breastfeeding

You can express and store breast milk the day before going to work or before going to work, and label the date and time of expression on the outside of the container so that you know clearly how long the breast milk can be stored. There are two types of breast pumps: manual and automatic. Mothers can choose the method according to their own habits. Generally, it takes 10 minutes to extract 60-120 ml of milk. It is recommended that mothers with sufficient milk supply express milk every 3 hours to maintain continuous milk secretion and prevent weaning.

3. Save

Store the milk bottles with date labels in the refrigerator. Be careful not to fill the bottles too full to prevent them from freezing and bursting. Generally speaking, it can be stored for 8 days if refrigerated at 0-4℃.