A Whole Lot of Milk

Since giving birth over six months ago, I've amassed quite a lot of milk in the freezer. I stopped counting once I got past 300 oz but if I had to estimate, I'd say there was 500 oz in there. Generally, I've been giving Max freshly pumped milk rather than doing FIFO from the freezer. However since I'm still producing about an extra bottle a day, it quickly adds up.

This afternoon, I decided to do a quality check on the milk. I took the oldest bag (dated 11/24, coincidentally my birthday!) and defrosted it. Smelled suspect. Tasted (yes I took a sip) very suspect. I immediately grabbed a bag from end of Dec. No smell, but still tasted a little strange. I then grabbed a fresh bottle from the fridge and tasted for comparison. No strange taste at all. Now in full paranoia, I grabbed a bag from early Jan and a bag from late Feb. Neither smelled but the Jan bag still had a strange taste while the Feb bag didn't. After some googling, it sounds like most frozen milk will taste different. It's not actually bad unless it smells like sour milk. In that case, I would say the milk up until late Dec has gone bad but the milk after was fine. Nonetheless, I made the executive decision to DUMP IT ALL. Well, up until mid Jan at least. I mean if there's even any doubt, why risk it? Plus it plain tasted weird. I know I wouldn't want to drink that milk if I were a baby.

So I proceeded to clear out about 200 oz of milk. I didn't count but it sure filled up my sink so lets just say it's a lot. Here's how the freezer looked afterwards.



I wasn't particularly upset to be throwing it all away, probably because my milk supply is still going strong. It was strange looking at that volume of fluid and thinking "wow my body produced that". Then again it's not horribly surprising given the volume of waste a human body is capable of producing in a day.

I'm still aiming to continue breastfeeding until 9 months. I'm not going to lie, it's really tough finding time to pump at work and I still get random milk blisters/clogged ducts, but Max loves his milk and who am I to deny that chubby little burrito ;)?