can i freeze ebm that has been in fridge for 48 hours ?

[smk84]

hi, I am wondering if this is ok to do? I am then planning to add bits of expressed milk that I get over the next few days. If it is ok to freeze and add to, when I defrost it, do you know how long I have to use it?

If I am remembering correctly you should freeze it on the day of expressing. So you can keep it from one day and add to it during the day if you want but should freeze it that day. I'm not sure exactly why but that's what I was told.

Have you looked on kellymom?

Ideally you'd freeze on the day. I find the milk storage bags great for that as you can pop little bits of milk in the freezer and not worry about using up all your bottles/tubs!

Once defrosted use within 24 hours.

thanks so much, did loo on kellymom but couldn't find

If you freeze the first lot of milk, then the next lot you have expressed you chill in fridge and when cold add to the frozen milk and repeat until you have 2-3oz in one container. It's better to freeze in small amounts so you don't end up defrosting a 8oz bottle that's got 7 lots of expressing in and wasting most of it as baby only takes 2oz.

Always treat the milk as the oldest milk - so if a container has milk from Monday the 1st, Wednesday the 3rd and Monday the 8th you treat it as all being Monday the 1st's milk.

I just used rigid sided plastic containers to freeze milk in (from Asda/Poundshop) that only took a small amount so they defrosted quickly and I didn't need to get out more than necessary.

Some people use the glass baby food jars/meat paste jars (well cleaned and popped in steriliser of course!) as then they don't need to buy anything special they just reuse

I had some 4oz bottles from a milk bank that I used (they were left over from my sister donating to them). They took up a LOT of space in the freezer though, so I started using ice cube trays (thoroughly washed and sterilised), I found each cube was roughly 1oz and it was really easy to defrost exactly how much I thought she would need never worked because she refused the bottle for the cm I also used the milk storage bags from home bargains as you can freeze them flat and they just stack up on each other rather than taking up so much space in the freezer (and they defrost quicker too)

thank you , great ideas :)