Transcription:

Melanie Cole, MS (Host): Whether you're going back to work or you want to have your partner help with feedings, or you want to make sure you have breastmilk for your baby even if you're just going away for a few hours, you need to think about pumping and storing your breastmilk. Here to give us tips about pumping your milk and storing it safely is my guest, Dawn Bower. She’s a lactation specialist with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Dawn, I'm so glad to have you with us. There’s so much talk lately about breastfeeding and storing specifically. So first, tell us the health benefits of breastfeeding for baby and mom.

Dawn Bower IBCLC (Guest): Oh goodness. Where do I even start? The health benefits for mom. Everybody can lose weight faster if they're making milk because we’re burning more calories making that milk. There’s less chance of breast cancer. There’s less chance of other cancers for mom. Less chances of osteoporosis, diabetes. Speaking of diabetes, if mom is a type 1 diabetic often times she’ll use less insulin while she’s breastfeeding or pumping. For baby, we have less infections. Less ear infections, less other illnesses. The weight, there’s been some talk about later in life less chance of obesity on that child. There’s some talk also of a little bit higher on scores in school. It’s a win-win all the way around. Then for the Earth, it’s by breastfeeding lowers the carbon footprint for later generations.

Host: Here, here. That is certainly true, and what a great point that you brought up for the Earth and how great that is. So how does a woman know when her milk will come in?

Dawn: Well typically somewhere around three to five days after giving birth the milk starts to come in. Mom’s going to feel maybe some warmth in her breast. They’ll begin to feel fuller and that’s the start of it.

Host: So then let’s talk about pumping because sometimes women do have to go back to work. Or, as I said in the intro, maybe they want to get dad or siblings anybody else involved in the feedings. So tell us about the best ways to pump—manual versus electric—because there's a lot out there.

Dawn: You're correct. You're correct in that. First of all what I’d like to say if everything is going well, we like to encourage moms to not pump for the first month. We want baby to help regulate that supply and learn to work the breast and have that supply and demand equal and working well for that dyad. So after that month, if mom’s going back to work, then starting to pump is definitely the plan. A little bit to begin with and then gradually building. The early morning pump—the early morning feed rather—the one around 5:00 is usually the one that we produce the most milk. So that’s a good one to start with. If mom is going to just need an occasional bottle, learning how to do hand expression may be better. It’s easier, it doesn’t take any equipment, and that would be for somebody who’s going to to go out to dinner once in a while. Grandma or somebody’s going to watch the baby and you just have a short separation.

For a working mom, a good dual phase electric pump is definitely the go to. There’s several on the market. I really can't—I don’t want to speak about different brands, but I would encourage moms to do their research so that they know they're getting one that works well for many.

Host: I always appreciate the reviews on those kinds of things because then you can see what other mothers have gone through when they're looking at say those electric pumps. So is there a way to maintain or even increase your supply while you're pumping?

Dawn: There certainly is. Breastmilk is driven by supply and demand. So the more demand that we put on our breasts, the more the breasts will make. That would mean increasing the pumping, increasing the frequency. Especially for a mom that is away at work. You're not having that interaction that you would have all day long with your baby. You’d be picking up the baby. Baby might nurse for a little bit and then be put down and come back in 20 minutes and nurse for a little bit longer. It’s going to vary. It’s not going to be regimented where when you're at work you can only pump every two to three hours for 15 minutes. So we sometimes will throw in what’s called power pumping where you're pumping frequently during that hour and taking short breaks, which kind of mimics what the baby does. Of course, that may not be feasible while someone’s at work, but one the weekends or your days off throw that into the mix to help increase that supply.

There are other things that people do with foods and herbs and all of that. You should work along with somebody who is skilled and knows what the different herbs are. Some are just—They're counterproductive and not meant for certain people with certain—Like diabetes, thyroid, things like that. You want to work with the ones that’ll work best for you.

Host: Well, that’s a great answer and very well put. Thank you. So how do you properly store breastmilk for short and longer term? Can you freeze it? How long can it stay in the refrigerator? Give us a little bit about storage.

Dawn: Great question because once you’ve pumped all that milk, what do you do with it right? So freshly pumped expressed breastmilk—and this is from the CDC—you can leave sitting out for four hours. It doesn’t even need to be refrigerated. So if you're pumping to feed immediately, then you don’t even have to refrigerate it. You just put it next to your coffee table and feed the baby. However, if you're needing the refrigerator—if you're making enough to where you have to store—four days in the refrigerator. Then if you have a freezer with a separate door, we’ve got within six months is best but then up to 12 months in the freezer is acceptable.

Once you’ve thawed your milk, you have one to two hours to feed it to the baby. If it’s in the refrigerator, up to a day. You never would refreeze human milk after it’s been thawed. There's been some things on the CDC website—Because if your power goes out, let’s say, and it starts to defrost. If it still has ice crystals, you can go ahead and put it back in your freezer. All of this information can be found on the CDC’s website. If you just google ‘CDC breastmilk storage’, all of that will come up for any of your parents that are listening.

Host: What about if your baby won't drink on thawed breastmilk or doesn’t really like pumped milk from a bottle?

Dawn: Oh yeah. Well, many lactation consultations can work with the baby so that the baby learns how to suck on a bottle. That may be part of the problem and we do that often here. The other thing may be sometimes when breastmilk has been pumped and sat in the refrigerator and then frozen, it builds up a high lipase. Lipase can give a soapy taste and smell to the breastmilk. Many babies don’t like that. There is a way to scald it and it kills that lipase so it doesn’t grow, but that would have to be done prior to freezing it. That tends to help the babies to want to have that milk where it doesn’t have that icky taste to it.

Host: Well thank you for clearing that up. So then talk about the milk depos and tell us a little bit about the donor event going on because people have heard now in the media about donor milk. Whether they're accepting donor milk or whether you're supposed to donate it. Tell us a little bit about that.

Dawn: That’s such a wonderful thing. There’s a few different things that people do. There’s informal milk sharing where like if I had extra milk and my sister needed some, I would give it to her. There’s definitely guidelines on that and there’s home pasteurization methods that someone could use. One that’s dear to my heart is the milk depos. We actually here at Henry Mayo are a milk depo. What happens is moms that have extra milk, they give a call up to San Jose where the depo is, and they are sent then free of charge to the mother to have her blood drawn. Make sure she’s safe to donate. They then pump, freeze it, and bring it to us, and we mail it up to the depo. The depo then tests all the milk, pools the milk together with other donors, then tests it again. They make sure that nothing’s gotten in there. It’s then packaged and frozen and sent out to NICUs and sick and compromised babies.

There’s different milk depos all over the country. So depending on where you live it would come from wherever that depo closest to you is. We happen to work with the one that’s in San Jose. We’re having a drive here, a milk drive, on August 29^th. We’re looking forward to meeting many new moms and many new donors that they're willing to share this wonderful food for babies that can be compromised and needing it who’s own parent is not able to provide that milk.

Host: So Dawn, wrap it up for us. What you would like the listeners to know about properly storing and keeping up or increasing your supply while pumping. What you would like them to know about some of the difficulties they might face and getting ready to go back to work if that’s what they're doing, and your best advice as a lactation consultant.

Dawn: My best advice is there’s help out here and to reach out and use a qualified IBCLC to help you navigate that. There’s so many questions when somebody is going back to work, and it’s always nice to come in and make that appointment and see us or somebody else to help plan out going back to work. I don’t know. I don’t even know how else to answer that. I just wish that everybody would reach out and use our services. I really do.

Host: Thank you so much for joining us and giving us such great, really useable advice Dawn. It’s so important for new mothers to hear. Thank you, again, and that wraps up this episode of It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Head on over to our website at henrymayo.com for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast informative, I'm sure you know some new mothers that are contemplating all of these things and they're not sure how to go about storing their breastmilk or pumping and increasing their supply. Please share this podcast with them. It’s got such great information, and these are the experts at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Be sure to check out all the other interesting podcasts in our library. Until next time, I'm Melanie Cole.