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Whether you're storing some milk for a much deserved evening out, or you're going back to work - freezing breastmilk is an excellent way to continue to provide your baby with your own milk. Depending on the freezer you can store your milk for up to 6 months or longer. With this, of course, comes guidelines on how to store your milk and how to heat it back up for baby.

As a general rule milk can be stored at room temperature for 4-6 hours, in a refrigerator for up to 8 days, in a refrigerator freezer for up to 3 months and in a deep chest freezer for up to 6 months or longer. It's very important to remember to chill your breastmilk before freezing it. Do NOT stick it directly into the freezer before it's spent a few hours in the refrigerator.

The kind of storage you use for your milk comes down to how you plan to use it. If it's stored for occasional use, meaning your baby is almost always getting nourishment straight from the breast, then using the plastic storage bags designed for breastmilk storage is fine. If your baby is generally being nursed from a bottle of expressed milk, as in a daycare situation, you may want to use glass bottles, as the live antibodies in breastmilk tend to stick less to the sides of glass then they do to plastic.

Breastmilk storage bags have a tendency to be cumbersome to use. After breastfeeding three daughters for a year each I have spilled my fair share of freshly expressed breastmilk when dumping it into a storage bag. The best method I've found is to put the bag into a bottle and then pour the milk in.

I found the Gerber bags with the ziplock closure to be the best when it came to durability and ease of use. After pouring your milk into a storage bag, take another storage bag and write the date and amount on it. Slip the milk bag into the extra bag and place it in the refrigerator for a few hours. When you're ready for the freezer put it into a ziplock freezer bag. You can add more milk to the freezer bag as you accumulate more.

If you pump more in a single day you can add to your supply. If you already have milk from the same day in the freezer you can chill freshly expressed milk and add it directly to the bag that you've already frozen - this can only be done for same day expressions.

When warming frozen milk there is one major rule - NEVER put in on the stove or in the microwave! Microwaving destroys the antibodies in human milk and that's one of the major reasons for breastfeeding in the first place. First thing is to remember to defrost the oldest milk first. Milk in glass bottles is best thawed in a bottle warmer. For milk stored in storage bags take it out of the second storage bag with the written information on it and either run it under warm tap water or place it in a bottle warmer. I've placed many a bag in a bottle warmer and have NEVER had one break or leak.

Once your milk is warmed to the proper temperature you can pour it into the feeding bottle. Human milk is not homogenized so the fat does separate. NEVER shake human milk - always gently swirl it to mix it.

Milk thawed from the freezer can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours but remember to NEVER reuse milk that has already been in a bottle your baby has sipped off of. If you thaw 6 ounces of milk and pour 4 ounces into a bottle for baby, you can save the other 2 ounces in the refrigerator. But once the bottle has touched your baby's lips you can only keep that milk for about an hour, due to the bacteria.

Freezing breastmilk kills some of the beneficial antibodies but is still better then formula feeding. Fresh breastmilk, either milk directly from the breast, freshly expressed or refrigerated is best, but frozen breastmmilk is still a safe and better choice for baby.

Learn more about this author, Danielle Friedl.
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