It’s finally time for a night out and you get to dive into the freezer stash of breastmilk you’ve been working so hard to compile!

BUT…

“My baby won’t drink my frozen breastmilk!”

“The frozen milk I thawed smells sour!”

“This milk smells like soap!”

What now?

There’s nothing wrong with your milk and it’s still safe to feed your baby, but it’s likely there’s a high lipase issue and sometimes your baby won’t drink it because of the sour taste.

Let’s fix that!

~~~

What is high lipase?

Lipase is an enzyme that breaks down fat in your milk. Some women have lipase that breaks down fat very quickly, making the milk taste soapy or sour. It doesn’t actually make the milk sour, but if you have this problem and smell or taste your milk yourself it makes sense why baby won’t drink it either!

There’s nothing wrong with you, and nothing you need to change about your diet or habits to fix this problem. It just happens sometimes.

#1 TIP FOR PUMPING MOMS

Before you build your large and impressive or your small just in case freezer stash, try freezing a bag or two first and do a “test feed”. You won’t know if you have a tendency toward high lipase unless you try feeding your baby frozen breastmilk. There’s NOTHING worse than throwing away any amount of liquid GOLD because you didn’t see if your baby would drink it before you froze it. You worked hard to pump every ounce!

 

What can I do?

The best solution is to scald your breastmilk before you freeze it to stop the lipase from continuing to break down fats in the milk. Scalding breastmilk is just like scalding cows milk which is called for in some recipes and the tutorial video below gives you a demonstration of the process.

New Little Life also offers an online breastfeeding course where you can find all kinds of information on breastfeeding, pumping, and more. Visit here for more information.

~~~

How to scald your breastmilk

Watch the video tutorial here!

~~~

Other options

If you don’t want to scald your breastmilk before freezing here are a couple of other options you can try:

• Freeze your milk fresh
  • If you freeze your pumped milk immediately, there may be less time for the lipase to start breaking down fats. Try this and then at least 1 weeks later thaw and try feeding it to your baby to see if this works for you
• Do a smell/taste test
  • Pump milk and pour into 7 small cups
  • Label 7 cups with 1 hour, 3 hour, 6 hour, 12 hour, 24 hour, 36 hour, 48 hour and place in the fridge. Smell or taste these at the appropriate times to see when your milk starts turning sour to the taste.
  • Consider having an extra set of cups left out of the fridge. 1 hour, 2 hour, 3 hour, 4 hour, 5 hour, 6 hour. Breast milk that’s been sitting longer than 6 hours outside the fridge isn’t considered safe to feed baby anymore so you don’t need to go longer than that.

High lipase in breastmilk is a fairly common occurrence in breastfeeding women who pump. Try these tips and tricks then comment below and tell me what worked for you! Don’t forget to Subscribe to my YouTube Channel and the New Little Life Blog for more information on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and new motherhood.

~ All things for you and your new little life ~