I thought BM was fine in the fridge for upto 5 days? I put a couple of oz in Saturday and went to use it this morning and it smells of bad eggs. Am I doing something wrong? The fridge is cold enough.
Same thing happened to me last week. I did some googling and think that my milk enzyme (lipase?) goes bad sometime around/within 24 hours. My MW also told me it was fine to use up to 72 hours in the fridge, so that is what I was going by. Then I offered some that was only 2 days old to my LO on Tuesday or Wednesday last week and she refused to drink more than a half ounce/ like 15 mL. Finally she pushed the bottle away. So I smelled it and it smelled like metal/dish soap!!!! No wonder she didn't want it... Turns out at that point it's still "safe" to drink but doesn't have the same taste/smell (obviously) as fresher milk. I then smelled the rest I had in the fridge and had to throw out about 75% of my stash which smelled the same.
But I fed her a more recent pump and gave her some direct from me and she drank both very quickly, like she hadn't eaten in days. I felt like a terrible mother but was happy to finally see her taking in a lot (like 3-4 ounces right away!
) so I knew it was my older milk causing the issue. Unfortunately it means that after steadily gaining weight for 3 weeks she remained the same for an entire week. My MW is pretty sure it was this milk issue causing her to only drink an ounce or two max from a bottle.
However, someone also told me that freezing the milk might help retain the enzyme and taste/smell, especially if I defrost the bag in the fridge and use it very quickly, say within like 8-10 hours after defrosting. So I am trying this out and have frozen just a few bags. I'm currently defrosting my first now and will try it out tonight. I'll let you know how that goes. If it works, I will start freezing the majority of what I pump and only putting 2-3 max bottles in the fridge at one time.
Also, I know some people disagree with the combi-feeding approach, but we are giving her 1-2 formula feeds per day right now until I'm positive she's able to take in enough from me again. While it may not bother some people about weight gain, it concerns me greatly. So until I am positive she's gaining weight again I'm going to continue offering at least one feed per day (usually evening before bedtime) of formula. When I do that she easily drinks at least 100-110 mL (~3.5 ounces) and then sleeps for 4-5 hours. But we're also lucky that she took this formula the first 2 weeks before my milk came in -- when I was pumping as much as possible and giving her breast every third feed, so she's used to having some formula already and it doesn't seem to affect her negatively and she doesn't refuse it when she's hungry.
