Reheating thawed breastmilk..is it ok???

[hazlinh]

I just started working and my baby is 2 months old. I have stored expressed breastmilk in the freezer for mum/ babysitter to use during the day. I freeze them in those little Avent disposable bags (abt 3 ounces each bag) and thaw them in the fridge overnight. But sometimes what happens is when baby cries in hunger and mum rushes to heat up a bag of milk, the baby takes about an ounce or two and then falls asleep for an hour or so..

What I want to know is, is it ok to put the milk back in the fridge, and then reheat it again for baby later? And for how long can the milk stay ok to consume???I find that this is so annoying cos I've played safe so far and had to throw out a bag a day. I've only been back at work for three days. Help!!! After all the trouble in expressing (I have problems with let-down with my pump) I'd really like to know if the milk can be salvaged!

No. Definitely not. I would store it in small amounts, and then you don't need to worry about it. It is soul destroying though isn't it, when you've struggled to express some, and it goes to waste.

Agree with Musica, never reheat mill already reheated. Afraid you have to discard it. Also agree about storing in smaller amounts.

But what are you worried about? Where is the evidence that reusing expressed breastmilk would be harmful to a term, healthy baby?

Milk does not need to be heated - obviously it has to be defrosted - but it can be used straight from the fridge.

I don't know of any research on re-using, except that we do know ebm stays fine for several days in the fridge. Common sense would suggest to me that defrosting, using and then putting it back for later is not going to do any harm.

If you think it might be going off, then smell or taste it.

tiktok- why don't you write a book on bf? I would buy it.

Just to add, I am not recommending deliberately doing this - I just can't see it would do any harm if it happened, especially to a fully bf, healthy baby beyond the newborn stage

thanks...did try reusing one batch within an hour of it first being used and daughter seemed ok.
however yesterday the husband reheated a batch THREE hours after it was first used, and the baby threw up after a while.

Not sure if it was just a coincidence, he swears the milk smelt fine, as it always does. Baby tends to throw up regularly anyway, due to a touch of colic and parents' failure to burp her properly...

Oh another question: is it ok to refreeze thawed EBM after leaving it in fridge for abt 6 hours? My guess is that its not...is that true?

oh and tiktok, I'm not quite sure what I'm worried abt with the reheating thawed milk..I guess I've heard too much conflicting stuff, and worried that baby might get tummy upset...

Hazlinh, I really don't know about rules here....but the reason people are advised not to refreeze thawed food is that after thawing and heating, microbes grow and then if you freeze and thaw again, and heat again, you have more potential pathogens - but this is really an issue for restaurants and caterers, and if you do a websearch on it, the real risks are associated with fish (esp shellfish) and fowl.

If you aren't heating (and you really, really don't need to heat ebm) you are reducing the reproduction of microbes anyway.....I am not basing any of this on anything other than common sense and reading of the lit. on how safe ebm is inside and outside the fridge, which shows it stays fresh for a long time (a lot longer than three hours !!) . So, to me, taking it out the fridge/freezer, thawing it , giving it to the baby, and then refreezing the thawed milk you didn't give her, is not unsafe.

If you put it into the bottle in small quantities only, so you are not refreezing milk that's been through the teat and mixed with salilva, I can't see the risk at all.

But maybe there will be some microbiologists here who will confirm (or deny!) this.