Can i use unfinished breast milk

Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. If you pump , or hand express , your breast milk at different times during the day, you may be wondering if you can combine the breast milk from different collections into one storage container. Well, if you follow the proper guidelines, you can. Here's what you need to know. When you're dealing with your child and your breast milk, safety is the top priority.

So, there are a few things to think about before you decide if combining breast milk is safe for your child. You can safely combine your breast milk under these circumstances:. You should NOT combine your breast milk if:.

You can add freshly pumped breast milk directly into a bottle of room temperature breast milk as long as the previously collected room temperature breast milk has not expired.

Fresh breast milk can stay out at room temperature for up to four hours. If you have a few pumping sessions within that time span and wish to combine the milk that you pumped, you can. You can then choose to store the milk or use it for feeding. When you add breast milk from different pumping sessions to a bottle of room temperature breast milk, you should consider all the breast milk in the container to be as old as the oldest pumped milk. So, if you add new breast milk that you just pumped to milk that you pumped three hours ago and left out at room temperature, the entire container, including the fresh breast milk is now three hours old.

You can add more breast milk to a container of refrigerated breast milk, but it should not be freshly pumped breast milk that is still warm at body temperature.

If you'd like to add your most recently pumped fresh milk to a bottle of already refrigerated milk pumped on the same day, you need to cool it down. First, place the fresh breast milk into the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour. Then, once it is cool, you can add it to the other container of refrigerated milk.

If you have defrosted breast milk and fresh breast milk at about the same temperature, you can put them together in the same bottle to feed to your baby. However, freshly expressed breast milk is more beneficial than previously frozen breast milk, so it's better for your baby to get every drop of your fresh breast milk. It might not be as convenient, but it's better to give the fresh breast milk on its own first.

Then, finish the feeding with the defrosted milk. This way, fresh breast milk will not be wasted. If you only ate half, you might refrigerate it and have the rest for dinner, but you probably wouldn't want to eat it for lunch the next day. The same goes for breast milk. If after feeding your baby, you're left with half or a quarter of a bottle, put it in the fridge and offer it again at the next feeding, but that's it. So it's best to either use the milk before bacteria have a chance to grow or toss it.

We know it can frustrating to pour hard-pumped breast milk down the drain, but in this case, it's best for your baby's health. If your infant consistently leaves a certain amount of milk behind, start putting a little less in her bottle at the start of each feeding you can always offer seconds if she seems to want more.

This will prevent unnecessary waste and help you conserve your milk for later feedings. Home Babies Breastfeeding What should I do with leftover breast milk? What should I do with leftover breast milk? To avoid wasting unfed milk, consider storing, thawing, and warming milk in smaller amounts. You can count the age of the milk from the first time that it was frozen, regardless of when it was moved.

Moving frozen breast milk between freezer locations should be done quickly to ensure that the milk stays frozen. It may be useful to pack the frozen breast milk on ice packs while transporting the milk from one location to another. After 4 days of refrigeration, your breast milk should be used or thrown away.

Breast milk has properties that slow the growth of bad bacteria. These properties begin to decline after a few days of refrigeration. Mixing freshly expressed breast milk with already cooled or frozen milk is not advised because it can rewarm the older stored milk. It is best to cool freshly expressed milk before combining it with older, previously cooled or frozen milk. It is also important to consider storage duration guidelines for breast milk. For example, if combining cooled milk pumped on different days, the duration of storage should be based on when the older milk was first stored.

Your breast milk may still be safe, but it depends on how long the power is out and how defrosted or warm the breast milk becomes. Freezers, if left unopened and full during a power outage, will keep food safe for about 48 hours about 24 hours if half full. When freezers are full, the other frozen items help keep the freezer colder longer.

The refrigerator will keep food cold for about 4 hours if it is unopened. While the power is out, keep the freezer and refrigerator doors closed as much as possible. Once the power is back on, check the condition of your stored breast milk. Frozen breast milk that has started to thaw but still contains ice crystals can be refrozen. If your breast milk has completely thawed but still feels cold, put it in the refrigerator and use it within the next day or throw it away.

Expressed breast milk is a food and may be stored alongside other foods in any refrigerator that is appropriate for food storage.