Correct storage of breast milk | Breast Milk

Correct storage of breast milk

Breast milk should be stored in plastic or glass jars with screw cap. For control purposes, they should be marked with the date and time of emptying the breast. If the frozen milk is to be transferred from one freezer to another, the cold chain must not be interrupted (cool bag !).

For the ingredients it is best to defrost the frozen milk in the refrigerator for 24 hours. However, if it has already been opened, it will only last 12 hours in the refrigerator. Alternatively, frozen milk can also be heated in a hot water bath, but never in a microwave. Milk that has already been defrosted should not be frozen again and warmed breast milk should be poured away completely.

Feeding

If supplementary feeding is necessary in the first four to six weeks but weaning is not desired, bottle feeding should be avoided (sucking confusion, see above). In this case a breast feeding set is best suited. The mother carries a bottle with supplementary food around her neck, from which two small tubes lead to the right and left breast.

The child drinks breast milk and supplementary food at the same time and stimulates the production of milk. It is also possible to inject some milk into the baby’s mouth with a small syringe (finger feeder) directly at the breast. If neither of these works, a cup or spoon can be used to feed the baby.

The child should lick the milk out of the cup itself. The disadvantage of this method is that the milk production is not stimulated. If it is necessary to feed solid food (ideally after 6 months), this should be done slowly and in stages.

After one month, another milk meal should always be replaced by a porridge meal. You have to try out which ingredients your child likes and gets. If the child rejects the porridge at first, it can be fully breastfed again and a new trial can be started a few days later.

If the porridge is prepared by the child himself, the ingredients should be from organic farming. It should start with a vegetable porridge, to which potatoes and meat or alternatively wholemeal and fruit are added later. Any kind of spices (even salt and sugar!)

should be avoided. Potatoes and parsnips as well as carrots and pumpkin are particularly suitable vegetables. The amount per porridge meal should be increased from about five teaspoons at the beginning to about 200 grams.

If you are not breast-fed after the porridge meal, add about one tablespoon of sunflower oil to the porridge. As a second meal a milk-cereal porridge in the evening is well suited. The cereals should be gluten-free (buckwheat, millet, corn semolina) until the tenth month, after which wheat and oats and after the first year of life rye can be fed.

In order for the iron from the grain to be well absorbed, some fruit should be added to the porridge. As a third meal a pure cereal-fruit meal is possible. In between, the child can get some solid food for practice, such as pieces of fruit or rice waffles, so that it can participate in the meals at about the age of twelve months.