Frozen Stash Gone Bad?

[portuguesemama]

Hi ladies! I've been EP for my March '15 baby since he was two weeks old. We were supplementing for a bit and while doing so, I started freezing some of my extra milk. I would wait until I had a bunch of extra bottles in the fridge and then freeze some. They were never in the fridge more than a day or two. We use a fridge/freezer combo and when I pull out milk to thaw, I thaw it in warm water because it was taking two days to thaw in the fridge.

My issue is that out of the 6 bags I've removed and tried to use, 4 of them baby refused to eat and when I smelled them, they smelled like sour milk. Is there a chance that I have a lipase issue and didn't know it before freezing a ton of milk that now is going to be all spoiled? Is there any way other than continuing trial and error to see if any of the milk will be good? I'm petrified that all of my hard work is going to be wasted

[madalynw]

Lipase does not smell like sour milk. Lipase is a soapy smell. Maybe this is oxydized milk problem?

forums.llli.org/showthread.php?115946-Excess-Lipase-vs-Chemical-Oxidation

[Widget123]

When my freezer milk went bad it started changing color, ie had a mix of different colors while still frozen. Other than something like that it's going to be trial and error. Did you try dethawing your most recently frozen milk to see if it had the same problem?

If you are still freezing new milk, try to do it as you pump it vs waiting a few days in the fridge.

[raechay]

I know that guidelines typically instruct that you should immediately freeze any milk that you intend to have as frozen stock. Not sure whether it's important enough that it would mean those couple days in the fridge would make the difference between good vs sour milk... But possibly. If you had any kind of power outage between then and now that you remember, would probably toss the whole lot unfortunately. Frozen milk also stays fresh longer when stored in deep freeze vs the freezer section of a standard refrigerator, so it could be simply that too much time has passed. If you're pretty confident you haven't had power outages etc, you could continue to thaw and see if it passes the sniff/taste test (yes I am suggesting you taste it yourself before offering it to baby). I agree that this is not a lipase issue however. GL.

[ajacot924]

Hey fellow M15 mama! I have an excess lipase issue and it makes the milk smell and taste soapy but not sour. Is there a local LC you could call? The hospital near us has an LC that will took advice calls for free.

[ruemorgan]

Paging portuguesemama ^^

[ruemorgan]

Some people say frozen milk in a standard refrigerator freezer is good for 3 months, some say 5 months. Have you been cycling your frozen milk? It does sound like your milk could have gone bad closer to 3 months.

[portuguesemama]

Wow ladies. I'm so sorry I didn't respond! Somehow I wasn't getting notifications about this post.

I haven't been cycling my milk but I also haven't had the chance to really look into this more. I will let you know when I do. Thank you for the advice ajacot924 and ruemorgan!