Freezer storage for plasticphobes...?

[MrsSlocombe]

I'm still pregnant, and planning my baby registry.  Though I hope to be able to stay home most of the time, I will have light needs for pumped breast milk, when I leave the baby with my MIL for a date with my husband, or if I have to take occasional, part-time work.  I am wondering, though, if there is any point in registering for glass bottles, since breast milk needs to be stored in the freezer unless it will be used within three days.  I am thinking it will probably be best to keep some in the freezer, since I don't know whether my milk supply will facilitate sporadic, last-minute pumping or not.

I have generally come to prefer glass storage for food, because it seems like researchers are always coming up with a new problem with plastic.  We now know to avoid BPA, but who knows what will be next.  I am starting to read that glass CAN be frozen if done carefully.  Have you had any luck with that?  I would hate to have to throw away breastmilk in a broken glass bottle, or, worse, accidentally have the baby ingest broken glass.  I know I can buy plastic bags/liners and then transfer them to glass, but if I'm going to do that, I might as well skip a step and just use a plastic bottle.

[Megan73]

I freeze food in glass canning jars all the time. I can't think that milk would be any different.

[lifeguard]

With ds I froze bm in the glass bottles at first. You can even add more to a frozen bottle (ie. pump, freeze & then pump & pour in on top & continue to freeze - you get a layered affect). You do have to be a little careful handling the frozen bottles 'cause they can break but it was never an issue for us.

That said, we found freezing in the bottles didn't work for us. It took a really long time to thaw because it was frozen in such a "big" chunk. If I froze the same amount in one of the plastic bags I could freeze it flat & it would thaw very fast. This was an issue for dh 'cause we only defrosted milk as we needed it ('cause you shouldn't refreeze it) so more than once he had a crying baby & was desperately trying to thaw the milk to give to him.

[RosieL]

My hope/plan is to freeze in glass bottles. I will be a pretty regular pump/freezer as I'll be working, and I hope to just pump, freeze, and pull out a pre-frozen one to pop in the fridge. Hopefully the cycle will be regular enough such that we always have a bottle or three defrosted in the fridge for the next feeding.

I'd love to hear other mom's experience with this. I hadn't thought about defrosting times with bottles versus bags.

[MrsSlocombe]

I just got this email from customer service at Green to Grow, a company whose glass bottles I am considering buying:

Thank you for your email and for your interest in Green to Grow. Glass is a good option for freezing, but it's important to avoid extreme temperature fluctuations. For instance, you would not want to take a full glass
baby bottle that had been in the freezer or refrigerator and place it in a pot of boiling water. This could crack the glass. It is best to let glass warm gradually with the water. For sterilization, if using a pot of boiling
water, we recommend placing glass baby bottles in cold water and allowing the glass to heat together with the water. Once the water has reached a gentle boil, a timer should be set, and the bottles should not
remain in the water for over 5 minutes. For heating milk/formula, we recommend placing a full glass baby bottle into a pan with two inches of cool water and heating the contents of the glass together with the
water. Of course parents must keep a close eye when heating their baby bottles and always test the temperature of the contents on their wrist before feeding baby.

I found this reassuring, and will simply plan not to have to heat the bottle in boiling water.  As a nanny, I never heated the plastic bottles in boiling water, either.  I would have worried that it would have melted the plastic or caused leaching of some sort.