Quick Tips for Storing Breast Milk at Work

I’m a full-time employee of a Call Center in BGC Taguig and I live in Cavite. I don’t own a car so I just commute every day. If you’re working in the Philippines, I’m sure that you are aware of how much time you should be spending traveling to work and getting home.

For me not to be late I usually get off of our house 3 hours before my scheduled shift. It’s just about the same time as well when going back home, but there are cases that it may take longer than that. Keeping stored milk when traveling can be hard sometimes due to the very hot weather.

In the past, I place my expressed milk on our company-provided freezer(which is required to be available as per RA 10028 (Chapter III)). The milk gets easily frozen which is good, however, I found some articles that say “Do not refreeze when it’s thawed”. Thawed milk can only last up to 24 hours when it is inside the fridge.

I realized that freezing milk at work isn’t a good idea because it gets thawed easily. I am not really aware of that before, so I usually put it back in the freezer whenever I get home. But I was told that Mikayla doesn’t seem to take the milk sometimes. That’s why I did a little research about storing my breast milk.

Since then, I started thinking about a new workaround in storing my breast milk so it will be taken by my baby safely. So far, my baby is consistently taking my stored breast milk, that’s why I think it would be nice to share it just in case some working moms also experience the same issue that I had before.

Things needed:

It’s most likely the same stuff that you use, but I’ll share the most practical stuff that I use.

Breast Milk Storage Bag/Bottle (I use bottles because it’s reusable)
Ice Pack/ZipLock with Water
Insulated Bag
Breast Pump

Recommended items:

Prep up

Always make sure that your containers and pumps are clean and sterilized. Non-sterile containers may contaminate the breast milk.
Do your pumping sesh as usual.

Storing your breast milk without freezing

After your breast pump session, close or seal your bottle or storage bag properly
If you have ice packs, put them in the freezer. If no ice pack available you can use a zip lock or plastic, put some water, and seal. Just put them in the freezer too. I usually freeze two ice bags of water.
Instead of storing them in the freezer, use the chiller.
At the end of your shift, your ice packs or iced water should be good.
Put your ice packs on the sides of your chilled milk.
At work, we have plenty of paper towels. What I usually do is I cover the entire bottle together with Ice packs using paper towels before putting it on to my bag.
Breast milk should last for 7 days if you’ll put it on the chiller once you get home. You can also freeze this up once home and can last up to 6 months.

Chilling the milk is good enough for me since I feed my baby when I’m home. So we never really get ran out of stored milk. Storing it for more than two weeks seemed to be necessary, I guess.

I know these tips are quite common. However, most of my colleagues who are lactating wondered how I manage my stored breast milk when in fact I travel longer hours than them.

BTW, I also found a great checklist you could try before getting back to work. I hope these tips will help. Please share! Cheers!

Learn more about transitioning back to work while pumping Mom Loves Best