Breastmilk Storage Hack & Bottle Feedings Timesaver

The day to day and around the clock exclusive pumping, and around the clock bottle feedings can be exhausting. I pride myself on working smarter not harder by implementing ways to make things easier and simpler for me and my household. I’ve been breastfeeding for 10 months now as an exclusive pumping mom, and having a system in place for breastmilk storage and bottle feedings have saved me a lot of time during Preston’s day and night time feedings.

Prior to implementing this breastmilk storage hack and timesaver, I was always storing the days breastmilk in a container and preparing Preston’s bottles as needed for a feeding. This was fine until my husband and I were up in the middle of the night exhausted and half asleep trying to pour milk into a bottle and get it into the warmer for an impatient, hungry baby. Sometimes milk would get spilled trying to pour from a container into the bottle. Then, there’s the assembling of the Dr. Brown’s bottles, that we love by the way, before even pouring the milk into the bottle.

So, I had to come up with a new system because what we were currently doing just wasn’t time efficient. We were wasting time and milk sometimes, and every breastfeeding or pumping mom knows the frustrating feeling of spilling your breastmilk.

Hence, I created and implemented my breastmilk storage hack & bottle feedings timesaver:

• Transfer the fresh, pumped breastmilk from my Medela pumping bottles into a Dr. Brown’s bottle.
  

• Assemble the 2-piece internal vent system that goes inside of the Dr. Brown’s bottle(assemble any parts for the bottling system you use). Put the nipple on, cap the bottle, & store the fresh bottle of breastmilk in the back of the fridge (breastmilk should always be stored in the back of the fridge where it’s coldest).

• When it’s time to add your next fresh bottle of pumped milk, bring the previous bottle of milk forward and place the current, fresh bottle of pumped milk at the back of the fridge. This allows you to always use your oldest bottle of breastmilk of the day first in the order it was pumped (if needing to add two bottles together to increase ounces, be sure that the fresh, pumped milk is refrigerated before adding to a previous, refrigerated, cold bottle of milk).

• Now that you have bottles of milk, just grab one from the fridge for the next bottle feeding during the day or night, and put into the bottle warmer.