Flying with expressed milk - help!

[pjani]

My six month old DS is a breast refuser during the day, he has almost all expressed expressed from a bottle.

I’m flying 12 hours tomorrow and the Heathrow website is very unclear.

Can I fly with frozen milk as well as liquid milk?

My cooler is kept cold using ice packs which have liquid in them. Will that get through security?

I’m travelling with readymade formula just in case but I really don’t want to have to dump milk and the cooler at security.

Hope someone can offer advice!

TBH it very much depends on security in the day! By far the easiest thing to do is to order ready made milk from the chemist airside and just take empty bottles in the flight.

Here's the link
boutique.heathrow.com/en/retailer/boots/products

I can’t see it being a problem but always flew with LOADS of formula so only going on that. Also larger bottles of water not a problem for children. They have a special machine that they put each bottle/container in to check it. You don’t have to taste it anymore. Hopefully someone will come along who has flown with breast milk but we have flown about 20 times with babies and always found uk airports very accommodating when it comes to baby liquids/food.

I flew from Manchester last month. At security was a family with a baby and toddler. Woman went through with the children, man waited for bags going through scanner. He had the milk with him. Security wouldn't let him through with the milk until the woman returned with the baby. This took about half an hour as security was very very busy. (I was stood next to the man waiting for my bag to be checked, it kept getting put to the back of the queue 😱.
When woman returned she was not best pleased to say the least!
What is possible to do, and what is easiest to do isn't always the same thing.

Be careful expressing on the plane. I exclusively expressed too and had to express twice on an 8 hour flight and the pressure caused major nipple bleeding. The milk was bright red and DD wouldn’t touch it.

I've flown with expressed milk twice. Cooler bag, frozen & fresh. Lots of it. It was fine both times. Didn't have liquid ice packs though so not sure about that.

They are fine with ebm. But weirdly not with empty pump bottles! I have been caught a couple of times on an outbound work flight at Heathrow - had to pump a little to get some milk into each bottle before I was allowed to take them through security. Go figure!

It takes an absolute age to get everything through so allow lots of time, but you should be fine. Also recommend those instant cool packs that I think are intended for insulin - you can buy them from chemists. Much less messy than melting ice!

Thanks so much all. Just wanted to update that I got through with everything: 270ml bottles of ebm, frozen ebm and the ice packs in my koo-do cooler.

As well as the 200ml bottles of formula which happily I didn’t need!