How can I travel with frozen breastmilk? advice and ideas needed please!

[Mollyfloss]

I need to take a short plane ride in a couple of weeks and drop off my baby who will be 2 months old with my Mum and then go away for work for 24 hours. When I arrive at my Mothers I will only have two days before I leave which won't give me enough time to express enough milk there to feed my Lo for the 24 hours when I'm gone. So I am going to start expressing and freezing breastmilk in advance. The trouble is that I need to transport the frozen breastmilk there, keep it frozen on the trip and then pop it into my Mum's freezer ready to be defrosted a couple of days later when I have to go away. Anybody know how I can transport frozen breastmilk? Thermo flasks?

freeze it in plastic bottles and put in cool bag with lots of ice packs. It should stay frozen for some time (I have done this) but not sure if long enough by the time you travel to airport etc etc. Some company somewhere would have frozen goods bike service but i bet it would be expensive.

Are you just going to Ireland, Molly? If so, lalaquack's suggestion will work fine. I know on LLL forums, some women shipped their milk on dry ice but that was to send it home to their babies when working away, not to bring it with them IYKWIM.

BTW, these Axifeed bottles are great for storage, I used them when ds3 was in SCBU and you can get them in a 50ml size which is allowed in handluggage.

Thanks for the advice! Yes, I'm going to Ireland. I need to keeo the milk frozen as it will be defrosted 2 to 3 days after I get there (I have to France for 24 hours and my Mum is taking care of DD). I'm actually hoping to store it in my checked in luggage as I will have quite a lot. Do you think this will be a problem?

So if I get some of those Axifeed bottles and freeze the breastmilk in them then pop them into a cool bag with ice packs that should get me from London to Dublin? The milk needs to stay frozen for about 5 or 6 hours.

Wouldn't you have to check it in anyway because of the whole no liquids in hand luggage thing?

Interesting Apparently it's better to use frozen gel packs...

Molly!!!
post-natal

Hi, Lakeland sell Chillerz sheets, which stay frozen for much longer than ordinary icepacks - www.lakeland.co.uk/product.aspx/!5723

Might do the trick?

another vote for Axifeed - I bougth a dozen and they have saved me a fortune in plastic bags and they nver ever leak.

and transporting dry ice on a plane is way more hassle than it's worth - I've tried

a frozen overnight courier is only about £30 if you can lay your hands on the dry ice first though.

When we moved house and had to turn off freezer at old house and defrost etc, I packed my breastmilk in a small coolbox, then put that in a larger coolbox which had gel packs in. After 48 hours it was still frozen totally solid.

does it not keep chilled for up to three days?

do you need to freeze?

nightshade, I think Molly needs to start building up a stash now for this trip so that milk will obviously need to be frozen. She won't be able to pump that much in addition to feeding for the 3 days beforehand. Mind you, according to LLL it should keep for 8 days but I never kept mine that long.

Thanks for the advice ladies. I am definitely going to get the axifeed bottles, the gel packs or chillerz sheets (both are apparently much better than regular ice packs) and this bagwhich looks like a good size for travel.

I have a couple of weeks now to freeze a bit every day. I'll do a bit every morning. After DD feeds I'm only left with about 5 to 70 mls so it will take a bit of time.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Molly,what pump do you use?

Medela mini electric breast pump... Just wondering here if there is something better that I could use on a daily basis...