Haaaa! Andrzej just turned 6 weeks old today. And today, for the first time, I had the opportunity to feel like a mother by feeding my son breast milk. However, before that happened, I had to figure out how to warm it up, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about today.
I’ll start with what I mentioned in the title of this post, namely information on how to warm up breast milk so that it retains its properties. I used the simplest method, which I will describe first. However, I know that among my readers there may be those who feed their child from a bottle more often than once a quarter. For them, I have advice that significantly streamlines this process.
Warming Up Breast Milk Without a Warmer?
Oh yes, it’s possible and not difficult at all. Let’s start with the fact that breast milk given to a child should have a body temperature, which is about 37 degrees Celsius. To warm it up to this temperature, just take it out of the fridge, where it may be in a bottle, and then put it into some pot with warm water. The water should have a temperature of about 40 degrees. After placing the bottle with breast milk in it, you need to be patient because, unfortunately, warming up the milk takes a while. In the meantime, you can replace the water with warmer water. The brave and vigilant can even heat the old water on the stove, but this must be done very quickly and very carefully, because too high a temperature will cause the milk to lose all its properties.
I used this method. I managed to warm up the milk, and I checked its temperature on my wrist, of course. The little one ate it with great satisfaction. And with great zeal.
Warmer and Everything Becomes Simpler
I suspect that people who regularly express milk and often feed the baby with a bottle may not have the patience to stand over a pot of warm water every 3 hours watching as the breast milk warms up. But for them, I have a very good solution, which is an electronic and automatic milk warmer. On Allegro or OLX, you’ll find tons of such wonders, which not only automatically diagnose the temperature of the milk and then warm it up but also take care of sterilizing the bottle or other accessories necessary for feeding. Price? You can find something from 50 PLN, but in my opinion, it’s better to invest in nicer equipment for about 150 PLN.
But to be honest, I’ve never dealt with such a device, I just don’t like to buy the cheapest junk :D, which doesn’t mean that it’s sometimes not the best.
How to Warm Up Breast Milk on a Walk?
Surely there will also be readers who wonder how to warm up breast milk while on a walk. That is, we’re talking about a situation where the husband goes for a walk with the child. He doesn’t have his wife with him, who could pull out her breast. The smart husband, however, has a bottle with previously expressed milk with him. If he walks in the summer, he simply takes it out of the fridge and keeps it in a bag, in the hot temperature the milk will certainly warm up itself. It’s different in winter. Then, the forces of nature will not help us. But there are other wonders, like special thermal packaging for bottles with milk. Then we warm up the milk at home, put it into such thermal packaging, and go for a walk, being sure that the child will not fall into a hungry hysteria.
How Not to Warm Up Breast Milk?
I’ve already listed a few sensible ways to warm up breast milk, and now I’d like to say how not to do it. First of all, you should not warm up milk in boiling water or in an oven, where exposed to high temperatures it will boil and lose all its vitamins. You should also not warm up the milk in a microwave. It is also worth remembering that milk can only be warmed up once. That is, if the kid doesn’t finish their portion, the rest unfortunately goes down the drain. Unless one of the parents themselves wants to drink it 😀
How to Store Expressed Milk?
If you want to feed your child with expressed breast milk, you must ensure that it remains full of nutrients. To do so, you need to take care of it and store it properly. There are three options:
- Storing in the fridge – milk can be stored in the fridge for up to five days, after which it must be disposed of
- Storing in the freezer – in the freezer, milk can stay for 3 months. With deep freezing precautions, it can be up to 6 months. Milk is frozen in special bags or containers. There are also bottles on the market that can serve this purpose.
- Storing at “room temperature” – if you have expressed milk and neither a fridge nor a freezer, you can store it wherever you want, as long as it’s at a temperature up to 25 degrees Celsius. In this way, milk can be stored for up to 6 hours. I hope that now warming up expressed breast milk is no longer a mystery to anyone.