Reheating breastmilk - help with my HV please?

[PlasticLentilWeaver]

I have recently returned to work, and am pumping to supply BM to my 10 month old DS.

DS goes to nursery, and is the first BF baby they have had to look after. I gave them all the advice I could find on storage and reheating of BM, including the fact that it does not need to be thrown out after an hour like formula. All had been going well until I dropped him off this morning.

My HV has now stuck her beak in and told them this is wrong, and that they have to throw it out within an hour as it will have "bacterial build up". As a result, they have now changed their nursery policy to reflect this.

DS is one for snacking when given his bottles, and short of supplying them with his entire daily quota in 1oz bottles for them to warm as needed, and maybe have to warm 3 at a time, I am not sure how to overcome this, unless I can prove HV wrong.

Have any of you BF experts got any good review articles to support my position, so I can reeducate my HV and convince my nursery to review their policy which they have created just for me!

Jeez - they really are going with stupid aren't they!

Hopefully this should help. It's the guidelines that the NHS use too. Surely your HV should know this

Thanks, that's a good starting point. I know I have read that if a baby starts a bottle, and then refuses it, you can offer it back again with minimal risk of bacterial contamination from saliva. But, I can't find the proper reference anywhere.

(I should maybe say that if he was tiny, I would be being more cautious, but he is 10 months old now, and stuffs everything he finds in his mouth!)

Plastic - Would this or this be any better?

Would the nursery be more comfortable with a valved beaker like an AnyWayUp cup? The milk in the beaker wouldn't be able to be contaminated by milk re-entering the spout hole as the valve is in the spout, so if the lid was swapped for a fresh one before resuming a feed the milk would still be 'good'. Major overkill personally to swap lids but maybe it would stop nursery throwing away perfectly safe EBM?)

Thanks - that's where I read it, and have printed it all off for them. I wish I could find the original article by Brusseau to show the HV though, as I am sure she'll just dismiss it as rubbish I've read on the interweb. It may be only small numbers but he is talkking about 48 hours rather than during the course of a morning or afternoon at nursery as I always give them 2 bottles so that they can chuc

I'm very tempted to get hold of a copy of the Breastfeeding: a guide for the medical profession book, but it is over £50. Maybe money well spent if it stops the HV messing anyone else about!

Should have said 'chuck out at the end of the morning/afternoon'.

Plastic, could you order it Inter-Library-Loan from your local library? Ours makes a charge of around £4 for this.

Good luck.

I have access to most major journals via work, and can not find it. I think it is probably unpublished.

However, via one of those links, I have found another peer-reviewed article on bacterial contamination at 25C over 24 hours, showing only non-pathogenic growth, and am just about to try to source another on storage recommendations.

I've also just found a secondhand copy of that book for under a tenner....

Get it, lentil weaver.

And if the HV dismisses your Kellymom printouts then ask her for any written back up for what she's saying... tell her ANYTHING AT ALL WILL DO... and if she can't find any then you can be smug. And right.

had a chat (heated discussion) with the Head of Childcare this afternoon, which ended with me saying that I would write them a letter saying that I am happy for them to disregard the advice from the HV. Bearing in mind that DS is at the point of dropping his afternoon milk anyway, and they won't be offering morning milk until about 10ish, with lunch at 12, we're talking about offering milk for about a 2 hour period during the day. And that I would discuss my concerns about the incorrect advice provided by HV next time I see her. I may arrange for this to be sooner than later, once my book arrives.