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Yucky milk – Jessica’s story

Posted on January 23, 2010
Filed under: Expressing

My daughter loved to breastfeed from the very start, no major problems besides a few clogged ducts every now and then. I became interested in pumping and saving my milk to allow my husband to feed her occasionally, or for car rides. No matter how sanitary and quickly I froze my milk, my daughter would refuse it from the bottle. At first I thought it must just be the bottle she didn’t prefer but I then inspected the milk itself and noticed a soapy off-smell. I tasted it and it also had an aftertase not quite pleasant. I immediately pumped some milk and tasted it- sweet and clean tasting! I pumped more and put it in the fridge. Within the hour it was weird again. I could not figure it out! To top it off, my HUGE supply of bagged frozen milk was also affected by the yuckiness. No wonder my daughter wouldn’t take it from a bottle! After searching online I came accross something called extra lipase in the milk. For reason, some mothers produce milk with more lipase than usual. This is an enzyme that breaks down fats. The extra lipase means that the milk itself is sort of decomposing once it’s outside the breast. The only “cure” to this milk is to scald it before freezing. This is unfortunate because the act of scalding does break down some of the imunity properties. But I found that even scalded breast milk is superior to formula in a pinch. For what it’s worth, I was proud of myself for uncovering the mystery of the yucky milk. I’m now 8 months along with our first son and I’m very curious to see if I will have the extra lipase this time around. I nursed my daughter until she was 18 months and she adored her “boob-boobs”. (:

Filed under: Expressing

Comments

3 Responses to “Yucky milk – Jessica’s story”

marna on February 27th, 2010 9:21 pm

omg, i am so glad i came across this. i never expressed because i experienced the same thing, but i figured it was just because i was doing it wrong and didn’t bother trying again.

i am so glad that i was doing everything right and it was just my milk. thank you for posting this!
Anya on March 2nd, 2010 12:08 am

I think I have this problem too – I knew there was something wrong ‘cos whenever I express milk it smells and tastes DISGUSTING. Luckily my son doesn’t seem to mind the bad taste too much yet.

I had read something about some women having extra enzymes in the ABA breastfeeding book – but I didn’t know it was lipase and I didn’t know you could scald the milk. So, thank you v. much – I will look up how to do the scalding thing.
Jess on March 22nd, 2010 2:34 pm

I’m so glad my experience has helped you two!! I just had my son and lo and behold- yucky milk again :) Oh well, I guess I could start a Yucky Milk club- haha!