My little one is already 5 months old. I really cannot believe how fast the time has flown. Throughout this length of time, I have been saving mommy’s milk for a rainy day.
Just how much rain is this mommy prepared for? I think I’m ready for a hurricane. It’s been two months now during which I haven’t even had to dive into the voluminous freezer reserves, and I’ve been pumping 4 times a day when working and once a day on off days. So now about half of my freezer is filled up with – yup, you guessed – milk. I started to count the bags yesterday. When I got past forty bags, I stopped. Each bag has 4-6 ounces of milk in it, making me think that I probably have 200-300 ounces in reserve right now. No joke.
Now I ask you mommas out there for help. Is this excessive? Or just right? To me it seems excessive. First of all I have *no* idea how I’ll ever get through all that milk. Furthermore I am concerned that I am running out of space in the freezer where I can store food. This is the time when I have decided to call my lactation consultant for advice – this time to figure out what the heck to do with all that milk that I have in reserve. They call it liquid gold for a reason. That milk has been hard-earned and carefully collected. I don’t want it to go to waste.
How much milk should I really be storing? I keep waiting for the time when baby starts solid foods. Then I plan to thaw the milk in batches and to use it to prepare his little baby stuff, but so far he’s only on small quantities of rice cereal and even if I prepare half an ounce of milk with a spoon of rice cereal or so, he can’t finish that.
Would love to hear anyone’s advice on the matter! I’m up to my earlobes in stored milk! If this is a reasonable supply to keep, fine. But if anyone is in need of milk or knows where I could donate the milk I have, that would help me out immensely!
For somebody who has plans to use it and have other people bottle feed with it, then I don’t think it’s excessive (I in fact know somebody who had about that much, and ended up getting a separate deep freezer for it). But if you haven’t ever had to use it, and don’t foresee a time when you will, then it’s perhaps a bit excessive.
I had plans, too, of mixing bm (and then formula) with n’s food, but we skipped cereals altogether, and after a very brief experiment with purees, went with BLW, so that was a moot point altogether! So just think about if you’re really going to use it.
There are always milk banks, if you don’t want it to go to waste, or you could have T give the little man some of his feedings…
Thanks for the comment, n, I had hoped you would write. This is the store in addition to what I pump for daycare and what T feeds when I am out of the house. Because I pump for nearly every missed feed I have quickly replenished supplies and it just keeps growing. I imagine that once baby really starts with the cereal this supply will come in handy but we def can’t buy ourselves a new deep freezer. We may hve to store stuff at my mom’s. She already has about 5 bags of milk at her place too. I am also asking my lactation consultant and will look into milk banks.
hello,
for how long can you store it? I thought it was only three months?… Milk bank sounds like a good idea….;-)
hey rupal!
that’s a ton of milk – nice work:)
pennsylvania “eats on feets” is a great group (i know a bunch of mommas who have received/donated milk using this group) if you want to check it out on facebook.
krista
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“Eats On Feets Pennsylvania is a group run by non professionals facilitating access to human milk for human babies and children. We provide a commerce-free space where women can share their milk in a safe, ethical manner and families can make informed choices.”
Sounds like a lot of milk to me, and quite impressive, too! The milk bank would be my suggestion as well, there are lots of premature babies out there in need of bm.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. I really thought that I was going overboard with the milk saving. Initially we pumped about 60 ounces prior to a planned weekend trip and then I ended up taking L with me on the trip! So I started out with milk excess because of this and was pumping occasionally. Then when work began I already had a pretty good starter supply, and with regular pumping I’m having no trouble keeping up with Baby L’s demands. I also suspect that L has begun to cycle to feed more at night. He used to sleep for a 4-5 hour stretch and now all of a sudden he is waking up pretty often – like every 2 hours or so, and he feeds pretty well throughout the night. I guess that nobody told him that he was supposed to prefer pumped milk and feed in the day, but it is fun to nurse him directly anyway!