Talk to me about freezing breast milk

[Andersonx3]

So my DD is 9 weeks old, I've been expressing using a silicone pump. Usually I only express if I know I'll be out and need a bottle, or if DH wishes to feed during the night, so any expressed milk is stored in bottles in the fridge until used the same/next day. I'm going to start leaving DD for an hour here and there with PIL's so would like to have a stash of frozen milk so if it is an impromptu decision or I don't have time to express enough, then I have some in the freezer.

My question is - how do you all go about freezing?! I have Medela milk freezer bags ready, but how do you portion? Do you fill the bags or individually portion per feed? If so, how much per feed on average? How long can breastmilk remain in the freezer?

FTM, new to this so please forgive my ignorance!

I preferred to freeze in bottles as I could easily wash them thoroughly to reuse and I found it really convenient expressing directly into the bottle, putting a lid on and into the freezer.

I used the sterifeed bottles which I think hold 140ml. Anywhere between 95-120ml seemed to be a good feed for DD so I would collect that much and then freeze. As time went on the amount I would get in a session dropped so I would put the bottle in the fridge then combine that with the next session’s output into a 90ml bottle (once DD was weaning onto food and didn’t need as much milk).

I labelled the bottles with the date then stored in a large Lock & Lock box in the freezer, rotating so that newly expressed bottles went at the back of the box.

I think it keeps up to 6 months in a good freezer.

I used a mixture of bags and bottles. I would put anything from 80 to 120ml in them.

If you are using the bags definitely do not put the maximum amount they say on them in the bag. I did once and the bag broke.

I wrote the date I expressed them on them, then I put them in the top drawer on one side of my freezer.