I didn’t use my pumped milk for quite a while after pumping it. I started using it when I needed to give my daughter supplements to build her immune system at around 9-10 months old. My milk was about 8 months old at that time and had been stored in a deep freezer so I thought it should be fine.
When I thawed it, it had a funny smell. It smelled sour or soapy maybe even rancid. I looked up online what to do from many resources. I started scalding and even boiling the milk, because I was only planning to use a very small amount and I was still nursing from the breast so I didn’t worry about the boiled milk. I was mixing her supplements in this boiled, cooled milk. She tolerated it but didn’t really like it and I had to give her supplements in it.
Some of what I learned about lipase and some resources for you if you have or think you have this problem. The first thing what is lipase and why it’s important:
• Lipases help keep milk fat well-mixed (emulsified) with the “whey” portion of the milk, and also keep the fat globules small so that they are easily digestible (Lawrence & Lawrence, p. 156).
• Lipases also help to break down fats in the milk, so that fat soluble nutrients (vitamins A & D, for example) and free fatty acids (which help to protect baby from illness) are easily available to baby (Lawrence & Lawrence, p. 156).
• The primary lipase in human milk, bile salt-stimulated lipase (BSSL), “has been found to be the major factor inactivating protozoans” (Lawrence & Lawrence, p. 203).
Kelly mom got this information from a book entitled Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession. I have not read the book but I personally look into the details sometimes when I feel the need for more information on certain subjects.
I thought that scaling or boiling the milk would help the milk smell and taste better but it didn’t. My daughter sometimes would vomit up the milk mixed with those supplements. It’s hard to say if it was the milk or one of the bad tasting probiotics. I may never know.
The best thing to do is to scald the milk before freezing it and see if that helps to prevent the breakdown and bad taste. A woman by the name of MandD627 on youtube has a really good video on how to warm the milk properly by scalding the milk only to 180 degrees F. She uses a bottle warmer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMUVgxOnbPo&t=471s. I might have made a video about this but I didn’t decide to continue pumping at the rate I had pumped so I didn’t do this.
There is another resource I thought was helpful was another video by Oasis Lactation Services and there is what I think is a lactation consultant talking about testing your milk for excess lipase at home. I did attempt this and was so busy I didn’t get to taste it so it didn’t help me. She talks about the book The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding which sounds like an excellent book which is full of science. I might try this test with freezing and see how long my milk lasted after freezing it for 1 week, 1 month, 3 months etc. This is the link to her video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcgpGKHUC4c.
There was one other resource I thought might be helpful if needed was http://www.chroniclesofanursingmom.com/2011/08/excess-lipase-in-breastmilk.html. There was also another website that was helpful in explaining this topic as well as multiple other breastfeeding topics called http://www.justbreastfeeding.com/diet-concerns/lipase/. I wanted to leave multiple resources about this subject because while at first it was heartbreaking that I might have to throw away all my pumped breastmilk I read that it might be a blessing because I had a yeast infection in the breast for 2 months of pumping and may have had other chemicals that were being dumped into my breastmilk that may have helped to dilute what my daughter was getting. I say this because we recently had a lab test done and found out my daughter is toxic for several heavy metals some of which came directly from me; maybe all of came from me and the pumping probably helped dilute it.
Please share your story of lipase or other metallic substances in your breastmilk, your story could help someone else tremendously.