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♪ [music playing--no dialogue] ♪♪.
Hi, my name is Kaylin Keires, and I'm a graduate student
at Eastern Illinois University.
Today I'm going to talk about the safe guidelines that mothers
should follow when handling their breast milk.
It's really important that mothers understand and know
these guidelines because a baby's digestive system and
immune system is vulnerable to any contamination from bacteria
in the breast milk.
So first I'm going to talk about general food safety guidelines
that you should follow.
You should always wash your hands before you pump
your breast milk.
And then the container that you pump your breast milk into
should be cleaned with hot soapy water or in the dishwasher and
dried thoroughly before the breast milk is poured in.
Also, you should never add warm breast milk into frozen breast
milk because that could cause the frozen breast milk to
partially thaw--we don't want that.
Now, what kind of containers do you use to store breast milk in?
Well, you can use hard plastic or glass containers--you can see
here that I have these storage bottles that are made of hard
plastic--or you can also use storage bags.
Now the storage bags should be especially designed to store
human breast milk.
These are made with a thicker plastic.
There is a double seal, a double zipper right here,
as you can see.
And these features allow the container to hold the breast
milk without leaking or without the problem of tearing or just
becoming a risk of any contamination in the freezer.
So you really want to make sure that the plastic is designed to
hold breast milk.
Now one thing I want to talk about with the plastic
containers is that you should really try to purchase
containers that are BPA free.
You can tell that they're BPA free because they'll say on the
packaging, they'll say BPA-free.
What BPA is, it stands for bisphenol A, and it's a harmful
chemical that can actually leak into the liquid that the
container is holding--in this case breast milk--and then your
baby would digest the BPA.
So we don't want that, so really make sure that you try and only
purchase BPA-free products.
Next, how long can you store the breast milk for?
Well, after you pump your breast milk, you can keep it at room
temperature for six to eight hours.
The container should be sealed airtight and it should be kept
in a cool place.
You can also store your breast milk in the refrigerator for
up to eight days, also sealed airtight, and it should be kept
in the back of the refrigerator.
Or you can store your breast milk in the freezer for three to
six months, also stored airtight.
Try and keep the breast milk in the back of the freezer where
the temperature is kept the most constant.
Finally, if you have a deep chest freezer, you can also keep
your breast milk in there for up to a year.
Now before you put your breast milk into the freezer, label it
with the date that you pumped the breast milk because when you
go to pull it out you really want to use the oldest breast
milk first, so by labeling it you'll be able to know
which is the oldest.
Next I'm going to talk about the two ways that you can
thaw your breast milk.
You can take your breast milk out of the freezer, grabbing the
oldest first, and put it into the refrigerator and let it thaw
overnight so it's ready to use for the next day.
Or you can thaw your breast milk by running it under cold or
under warm running water or like I'm doing right here, put it
into a bowl of warm water.
And you just want to use your hands to massage it and break it
up and thaw it and then you can open up the container and it's
ready to be poured into a bottle.
Once you have your thawed breast milk, you can keep it in the
refrigerator for up to 24 hours.
But if you don't use it within that 24 hours, you need to throw
it away because you can't refreeze breast milk, and it
will spoil if you wait any more than 24 hours.
Two last things about thawing your breast milk.
Never thaw it in the microwave or in boiling water on the
stove, because this can destroy some of the precious nutrients
in breast milk.
It could also cause hot spots in the breast milk which would then
scald your baby, so we don't want to worry about that.
So really stick to the two ways of thawing your breast milk--
in the refrigerator or in warm water.
And finally, breast milk may separate during storage and
you could probably notice this by seeing a
thin layer of cream or fat on the top.
This is no problem, it's completely normal.
All you have to do is just swirl the container of the breast milk
and all the nutrients will be blended and it will be fine to
feed to your child.
So I have talked about the general food safety guidelines
with handling your breast milk, the type of container that you
can use to store your breast milk in, the length of time and
the temperature which you can store your breast milk in, and
finally the two ways to thaw your breast milk.
If you have any more questions or you want to find further
information, please visit womanshealth.gov.
Thank you.
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