What should frozen BM smell/taste like when thawed?

[lkmiscnet]

I had been preparing to wean my almost 8 mo old in a month or so, but wanted him to have the benefits of BM well beyond a year, so I have been pumping and freezing BM since right after he was born.

I just took out one of the bags from June and defrosted it in the fridge overnight and continued the defrost for his dinner meal by putting the bag in some warm water to thoroughly defrost it. It tasted sour and a bit fishy. I presume it is no good.

In the first few months of freezing, I did not know to try to get as much air as possible out of each bag, and I also overfilled them, so I don't think I got a good seal and also got freezer burn. Also, for about the first 3 months, I was storing them in the freezer compartment of our fridge, before we got a dedicated upright freezer just for this purpose. So, the bag I tried was 8 months old and has spent 3 months in a regular freezer.

Not sure if that taste/odor is due to freezer burn or if I have the dreaded "excess lipase" issue I googled and read about.

Just because the taste/odor is off, does that mean it is bad or can I still use the BM to thin pureed food? Although, thinking about that, I suppose it might turn him off to whatever it's mixed with and I can't imagine it would taste or smell that great.

I will be heartbroken if 8 months worth of frozen BM is bad, as pumping has really been time consuming all these months and caused me a lot of stress in trying to fill a bag each day!

I guess the only thing I can do is just go through them bag by bag and start defrosting each day and pour out what smells/tastes bad.

Also, in an attempt to be frugal, when I used up all the 5 oz. Medela bags I started with and started with the 6 oz Lansinoh bags, I doubled up on the amount I put in each bag to get 12 oz as I figued he would be drinking that much in a day after a year, in some cases probably overfilling those as well. About 4 mo ago, I did end up double bagging the Lansinoh bags by putting as many as would fit in gallon freezer bags to ward off freezer burn or any odor absorption. Hope I wasn't too late...

What is thawed frozen BM supposed to smell/taste like? Anyone had success with this and how many months old was the frozen BM?

[Anastasiya]

Here is the info for milk storage and how long it lasts

It sounds like it's gone bad. It's very familiar to my story - I had to dump months worth of milk with my second baby because of the whole lipase thing, including all the fresh stuff I'd pumped that was in the fridge, after just a few days.

I would not use it to thin any foods if it smells or tastes weird, because an 8 month old will likely reject it anyway. And I wouldn't use it if it was freezer burned.

If you DO have a lipase imbalance, these storage containers have worked wonders for me! Haven't opened a bad batch yet.

Sorry.

[lkmiscnet]

These storage containers sound intriguing. Unfortunately, they only sell them in storage sets of three, and I currently have hundreds of bags stored, so I'm betting Milkbank containers would have been extremely costly with a need for a couple of hundred. The vacuum seal makes sense and it sounds like a great idea if you only need to store maybe a week or two worth of milk.

I'll have to keep these in mind should I be lucky enough to have baby #2 next year.

[lkmiscnet]

On another forum, someone mentioned that frozen breastmilk smells like stomach acid/vomit. Gross! But...is it really rancid and bad for my LO or does it just smell and taste different from fresh and it would still be okay to give to him? Would it actually make him sick and how would I know?

[Anastasiya]

If it smells and tastes like stomach acid, I cannot imagine anyone wanting to feed it to their child.

I think that some people don't learn how to store their milk properly and it goes bad constantly, so they think that's normal. Since I've been using MilkBank storage, my stored milk has actually tasted fresh and sweet like it should be.

Oxygen exposure ruins breastmilk over time. The more vacuum sealed it is, the better, but it sounds like your first batches weren't emptied at all of air.

With you I'd guess it's either a problem from not being stored very carefully or you have a lipase problem. Either way, there's no way I would feed that to my child...while it probably won't hurt him, I can't imagine it would be good for him, either.

[texmati]

My understanding is that the lipase doesn't make the milk bad, just taste funny. It makes it taste soapy/chemically. I think sour breastmilk would taste quite a bit like soured cow's milk-- undrinkable.

If your milk does have a lipase problem-- has *not* gone bad-- then you can try and cut it with fresh milk, or donate to a milk bank.

[goldfinches]

My milk does strange things in the freezer. It gets seperated, that's the best I can describe it. It turns fairly light and gets floaties. And, it doesn't smell so good. But, my girls both still drank it, and it didn't smell bad, just, off.

Try thawing a newer bag and see if it's the same way. Maybe your method of storing for the first 3 months did ruin those bags, but the other bags are still good???