Gone Off Breast Milk?!

[ampersandand]

I expressed breast milk late December over a period of a week. After expressing I put the milk into bags (ones specially made for storing breast milk in) and then straight into the freezer.

The other day ds was especially hungry so I defrosted a bag of milk by using warm water in a bowl and plonking in the bag of milk.

He refused the milk from his cup so used a medicine syringe (first time drinking out of a cup, refuses bottles). He spat it out.

I tasted the milk myself and it tasted rather odd, quite strong and a bit chemically.

I chucked the rest away.

Today I got another bag of breastmilk out, defrosted the same way and mixed a bit in with some banana for weaning.

I tried the banana and milk first and it tasted bad.

I tasted the milk straight from the bag and it tasted really strong again. Sweet but chemically and not nice. I chucked it away.

I've tried my own fresh bm after expressing and it has no taste to it.

I'm not sure why it tastes so bad after freezing?! It's as if it's gone off?

This is something that sometimes happens to expressed breastmilk on freezing. What a nuisance. The fats in it go soapy. You can briefly scald it before freezing to prevent it. More details if you google. Try saponification of breastmilk.

It's an enzyme in it which makes the milk taste soapy the longer it's left in fridge or freezer which is why it tastes fine straight away.

You can heat milk to nearly boiling then freeze immediately.

I had this with dd1 but not dd2 abd it is a pain but you can work around it.

I literally had no idea about this, thanks for your info, I've had a look online and some poor women have had to chuck hundreds of ounces of bm. I've only got about 10oz so don't feel so bad.

Thanks again, will try heating the milk.