Baby rejects defrosted breast milk

[jidelgin]

I have a glut of frozen milk and would love to stop expressing (although down to 2-3 a day now so it is doable)

Despite lots of help we never successfully established BF and baby had EBM for 7.5 months. At that point I was exhausted and needed to drop a pump sess or two for own sanity. I tried using some of my frozen stash (defrosted in fridge, bottle warmed in v hot water) but baby rejects it so I have had to introduce formula. The freezer is a reliable chest freezer and the milk is nearing 3 months old.

I would be open to any suggestions/theories.

Defrosted breastmilk tastes famously soapy and it's common for babies to turn their noses up at it as it mings. Apparently, if you scald it before freezing, you avoid this problem. What you do with your enormous stash, that you stockpiled before knowing this, I have no idea. I've got gallons of the stuff all tidily frozen and dated which ends up down the sink.

Use it in food? Like cereals?

It's lipase. Some women have too much lipase in their milk and if left for any length of time it tastes soapy.
As Elphaba says you have to scald the milk before freezing which means heating it to 160 degrees Fahrenheit ( I don't know what that is in Celsius, sorry!) cooling and freezing.
PITA for you, though.

That's about 70 degrees Celsius so I think you have to just bring it to the boil.

Neither of mine liked defrosted ebm so I used to make rice pudding with it (a fantastic way of getting loads of milk and carbs into them before they can drink cow's milk).

10oz defrosted breastmilk made up to 1 litre with full-fat cowsmilk
100g pudding rice
75g caster sugar
50g butter
tsp vanilla essence

Melt the butter and sugar together, then add the rice and cook for a minute or two. Add all the milk and vanilla - it'll go lumpy but just whisk it a bit and it'll sort itself out. Put it in a dish in the oven for about 2 hours on 140. I don't like skin and nor do the children, so I open the oven and whisk it every 20 minutes or so - stops the skin forming. Take it out when it seems like there's still a bit of milk left to be absorbed. This used to go down absolutely gangbusters with mine. To me there's still a bit of a tang of bm but it's worth trying.

Thanks Zuleika! I'll give that a go. Would a litre of BM work? Seriously, I have that much

I think the taste might be a bit overwhelming and also the fat content wouldn't be that predictable so the finished pudding might taste odd. You can use it (again, mixed with cows) in cheese sauce for pasta or cauliflower cheese and mash and stuff too.

Can i butt in?

Could I heat the bm in the microwave to scald it?

My saucepans aren't the cleanest best

Yes, you can scald milk in a microwave - I do it that way when I make bread.

Zuleika Do you eat the rice pudding as well then? I think I'd have to keep that quiet from DH. The thought of ingesting my milk horrifies him.

Yes, I do sometimes have a bit, though to be honest I don't like the taste of frozen bm either! - I just block out the thought of where it came from .

Breastmilk is a living substance. If you heat it up in the microwave, you kill Off the antibodies in it apparently.

If you can't use it maybe you can donate it OP? I know that doesn't help you but there are many women who would love to have your milk if you don't need it. Google and see there are donation sites all over the world

You can also heat it in a bottle warmer so long as it doesn't have a safety feature that makes it shut off when it gets too hot.
Choc, no matter how you scald it you kill off the antibodies but it's still a better food than formula.
Oddly enough, I had this problem on ds3 but not the others. I have absolutely no idea why.

Microwaving it kills the antibodies but scalding it doesn't. You have to do it when it's freshly expressed and do it on the cooker in a pan. Heat till it's bubbling slightly round the edges but not actually boiling.
Articles:

Sigman M, Burke KI, Swarner OW, Shavlik GW. Effects of microwaving human milk: changes in IgA content and bacterial count. J Am Diet Assoc. 1989 May;89(5):690-2.

Quan R, Yang C, Rubinstein S, Lewiston NJ, Sunshine P, Stevenson DK, Kerner JA Jr. Effects of microwave radiation on anti-infective factors in human milk. Pediatrics. 1992 Apr;89(4 Pt 1):667-9.