do you use the same bottle of bm for 2 feedings?

[waiting2bemommy]

So here I was getting all riled up at my mom for wasting my milk. Just now a friend told me that she always heated refrigerated milk, fed the baby, put it back in the fridge, and reheated it one more time for a second feeding. She says both her girls turned out fine (they did, I know them ) Is this safe? Is it common practice? I was told that the bottle had to be finished or thrown out one hour from the time the baby touched his lips to it. And so I've been wasting lots of milk that ds doesn't finish (even a 2-oz "snack" bottle)

What do you all do?

[detroitgirl77]

from what i understand, its ok as long as the next feed is within 2-3 hours

[veganone]

I try very hard to only put as much in as DD will eat per bottle. But, yes, I will reuse a bottle if it's within a few hours and it was put back in the fridge right after feeding.

DD was pre-term (so extra sensitive) and she never had a problem when we did that.

I can't bear to waste milk.

[saimeiyu]

The one-hour-and-throw-away rule is accurate for formula, because formula doesn't have any growth-inhibiting properties.

It's perfectly safe to re-use a bottle of BM as long as it's not like 4 or 5 hours later, if it was put in the fridge. If it wasn't put in the fridge, then not more than an hour later. that's if the BM was frozen and thawed. If it's fresh, you can actually wait longer, but that gives most people the heebie-jeebies.

[Benji'sMom]

Oh, this is on kellymom.com somewhere. You can put the leftovers back in the fridge and reuse the refrigerated milk for one feeding no more than 4 hours later. Basically what saimeiyu said.

[readytobedone]

Originally Posted by waiting2bemommy

So here I was getting all riled up at my mom for wasting my milk. Just now a friend told me that she always heated refrigerated milk, fed the baby, put it back in the fridge, and reheated it one more time for a second feeding. She says both her girls turned out fine (they did, I know them ) Is this safe? Is it common practice? I was told that the bottle had to be finished or thrown out one hour from the time the baby touched his lips to it. And so I've been wasting lots of milk that ds doesn't finish (even a 2-oz "snack" bottle)

What do you all do?

the babysitter heats the bottle once--DD drinks about half of it before her nap, then the rest when she wakes up. sitter leaves it out at room temp between feedings--and the time in between feedings is usually 2-3 hours.

i think it's better to leave the milk out at room temp than to re-refrigerate and then re-heat. DD does fine with the room temp milk.

ETA: oops! guess i am doing it wrong? maybe the sitter should put it back in the fridge in between feedings. on second thought, maybe she does. i don't really know, i guess...i will ask her!

anyway, the milk is always fresh--not from frozen--on her days. so it's pumped that morning or at most the day before. wonder if that makes a difference...

[saimeiyu]

It does make a difference. If it's fresh-pumped it's actually fine to leave it out for two or three hours. You can leaave a fresh-pumped bottle of milk (not eaten from) at room temp for 10-12 hours and it would still be fine. (Although the very idea makes DH nervous, but he's not used to BM just yet.) Isn't BM cool?

[Justmee]

Yup! We never used to heat milk for the twins (no one else would take a bottle). If we took a bottle out for the 2am feeding the same bottle stayed out until 6am to be finished.

[mchalehm]

I always felt uncomfortable going more than a couple of hours even if the milk was in the fridge--I just gave smaller bottles so that I could be pretty sure she'd drink it all.

[NonasMama]

We would leave milk out for a long time! I always let him finish the bottle, but I suppose it was ~4-5 hours at the most. DS was healthy as a horse. I remember someone asking me once if it was the same bottle that I was feeding him an hour before and gave me a disapproving look (she must have thought it was formula-or not known the properties of BM). I didn't leave frozen out as long though.

[svmaine]

Yikes, I can't believe I never even thought about these questions!! I have to supplement and with my first 2 DS's I used formula and would reheat the bottles many times during the day. I'm now using donated BM which is liquid gold to me and my baby and I can't bring myself to waste a drop. I've been doing the same thing of reheating, if there's only 1oz left I add another bag of BM, and whatever's leftover I put back in the fridge. After my DS feeds I do immediately put the bottle back in the fridge but it seems like I'm not following proper bottle protocol, I just can't waste it and he's healthy as an ox so I'm also not sure how willing I am to change what I'm doing. Any recommendations would be appreciated!!

[BakerALM]

Here is what I did for 22mths of EPing. Those storage guidelines are the BEST online, they come with temperature ranges not just how many hours you can leave it out for because it is different it your house is 60degrees or 80degrees.

Frozen milk is a bit tricker.... I always kept the bottles small since my DD was a snacker especially after she got older, NEVER more than 4oz mostly 2-3 unless it was nap time and then I knew she would surly finish the 4oz plus some since she LOVED to suck. If I had extra and i knew that she would not finish it in the next hr or so I would put it back in the fridge. I would not pull it out for the next feeding unless it was a substantial amount, say over 1oz. If less than that I would start a new bottle of frozen and follow the same pattern, putting the extra back in the fridge if it was not finished after an hr or so. This pattern would go on all day. By the end I would have a few bottle left that had less than 1oz in them accumulated in the fridge, I would pour them all into one bottle and that would be her first bed time bottle. I always knew she would finish it so the milk never went to waste and was never mixed with new milk. the second bed time bottle would be heated and then if she fell asleep before finishing it I would put it back in the fridge and give it to her in the AM when she woke. I would avoid heating milk at night and only used fresh then since it took so long to get it warm (I did not want her to have to wait) and I hated going down to the kitchen half asleep.

I know most of you nurse to sleep and bottles are just a daycare thing but you could do something similar with storing the small extras in the fridge and then using them all at once at some point at the last feeding of the day. Then if the nanny has to start a fresh bottle of frozen milk after the first bottle that was the mixture of the small leftovers that second bottle can just be put in her fridge and used as the beginning of the first feeding the next day. If your babe is not going to daycare the next day you can bring it home and give it there if you really don't want to waste it but I would not store it for more than 24hrs after being frozen, heated once, drank from, left out for about 1hr and then refrigerated. That just seems like a lot to me.

Happy pumping

[DoubleLove]

According to my co-worker (we are OB nurses), a studious IBCLC Lactation Specialist... What I've understood is the reason to not keep using the same breastmilk is because it is such a fresh live rapidly digestable substance that once digestive enzymes present in saliva come in contact with it, the enzymes immediately go to work and start breaking down the nutrients in it, essentially lessening the nutrients available to the baby. Small amount of saliva enter the bottle with every suck (even more so in venting bottles/nipples) so this process begins once baby takes a suck. Once baby takes a suck, idealy the milk is consumed in 30-60 minutes in order to preserve all the nutrients in the milk because its composition changes after about that amount of time. Smell the milk before the baby starts sucking on it and then after an hour smell what is left and you can definately tell the difference. But, I guess the milk is not bad, it just isn't as densly nutritious as it was. I guess this whole process also happens with formula, but since it isn't so easily digestable the process happens at a much slower rate. Also, according to LLL, breastmilk is stable at room temp for up to 12 hours after pumping it, and it's bacterial count (not from the milk, but from the pumping horn and bottles) is even lower after 4 hours than it was right after being pumped! Isn't breastmilk amazing!

One of my twins received pumped breastmilk in a bottle (serious nursing issues d/t his NICU stay as a preemie) till he was 14 months and I only have one lactating breast, so with twins supply was/is a major issue (but it worked with 99% BM till 8 months!) and every drop of milk was absolutely given to him, even if it went longer than an hour on the same bottle. Having learned this early on we did put it into no more than 4 oz bottles so it would idealy all get consumed with the feeding, but if it didn't I wouldn't throw it out...no way!