How can I heat expressed breast milk without curdling?

[cinnamon81]

Want to give expressed milk to DD, however last couple of times I've tried this the milk has smelled "off".

I only noticed this when pouring it down the sink about an hour after feeding her (well trying to feed as she didn't drink much), that the milk smelled really off like baby sick.

Both times I expressed the evening before and put in fridge. Have given as mid-morning feed, milk has seperated next day but just swirled a bit to mix, then put in jug of hot water to heat for about 5 mins. The hot water is from kettle - boiled then left for about 15 mins.

Why is this happening? My milk doesn't smell like this when expressing or before I heat it. Should I be heating in cooler water and waiting longer for milk to heat? Also does microwaving to heat kill off the antibodies?

I always used the hot water direct from the kettle, and there was never a problem. Does it smell immediately after heating, or just after an hour or so?

Haven't noticed just after heating, tend to leave lid on, just thought that an hour is really quick for something to go off, I'll check next time.

Having a nightmare time with introducing expressed milk/bottles, wish you got more information about it when pregnant or from HV!

I think I was told to get rid of milk after it had been out for an hour at room temperature. I can't help with the introducing bottles thing I'm afraid - I had to express and then bottle feed as ds wouldn't latch. I agree though that the information is pretty minimal.

cinnamon, it sounds to me like you might have a lipase problem. If you produce too much lipase your milk smells and tastes bad even if it's not long since you expressed. The best way to test is to taste it when freshly expressed, then leave maybe 24 hours and taste again. If it tastes a lot worse then you have a lipase issue. If you do, then the thing to do is "scald" the milk immediately after expressing, which is to heat it till bubbles form at the edge but do not boil. Then cool immediately and it will last a lot longer.
Lipase does not cause a health problem for the baby but can make them refuse bottles. FWIW I found the only bottles my fussy ds3 would take were Playtex disposables with the Latex NaturalLatch teat. HTH.

hey there, I have excess lipase in my milk, and I am scalding my milk. It does the trick, my milk now lasts for ages.

I noticed that my expressed milk went a bit yellowish, and didnt smell quite right.

After extensive research, found out more, and now have solved the problem. Was a bit sceptical of scalding, and didnt quite know what I was doing, but got the hang of it now, so please pm me if you have any questions. xx

Thankyou chipmonkey and mummalish for info - hadn't heard of lipase before now. My milk certainly goes off rather quickly, smelled & tasted the stuff i'd expressed last night - it's not nice (not that I find it tasty when fresh, but definitely "turned").

Will have a look online for more info, but may pm you if got confused mummalish .

There is alot of info out there, it's not something I had ever heard of.

Simply put, by heating up your milk, it does "something" to stop it going off. I am sure you will find the exact explanation somewhere.

You may want to experiment with a bottle of milk, and see how long it takes to "turn".

So express some milk, and separate it into different bottles, and label it with the date. Heat and check your milk every few hours to see how long it takes to turn. Some people are lucky and it can take days, others milk turns in hours.

To scald, what I did was pour freshly expressed milk in a pan (I bought a little pan specially for this), put it on the cooker and wait a few minutes till it bubbles round the edges (keep swirling so that it wont form a skin). Then I pour into a glass jug over some ice water to cool it and put in fridge.

This treatment has done the trick. Seems like a big job, but really it takes a few minutes, and problem solved!!

Good luck, please let us know what happens. xx