feedtheartist

We started actively trying to coax my son to take a bottle a few weeks ago, given my impending return to work. We tried standard silicone and rubber nipples, BornFree wide bottles/nipples, and Tommee Tippee closer to nature bottles/nipples. My husband, sister-in-law and grandmother all tried offering it in a variety of ways. We tried cup, spoon and dropper feeding. We tried different temperatures of refrigerated and frozen milk. He spits the milk out, shoves the source away, cries at the mere sight of a feeding device, and finally falls asleep. My first day back to work, he refused to eat for nine hours.

Obviously, going nine hours without food is not good for him. After doing more research, I found the nipples may not be the problem. The enemy in expressed milk is the enzyme Lipase. Lipase breaks down the fat in the milk. That’s a great assist for babies getting it straight from the tap, but a big problem if the baby needs to get through a work day without mommy.

Lipase is fast. If there are high levels in the milk, it can take on a bitter or metallic taste in as little as 24 hours. Freezing only slows the process, so the flavor may be degraded in 1-3 weeks. I remember tasting some milk when we first started offering it from the frozen stockpile. It was sweet, but also very bitter; I figured that was just the normal flavor.

We decided to experiment. This morning, my sitter offered 6 week old frozen milk from the BornFree bottle; he refused it. She cleaned it out and tried some that was pumped and frozen while I was at work yesterday. My boy greedily sucked it down and wanted more. She offered the older milk, again he refused and went to sleep.

My conclusion is that I must be one of the unlucky committed-to-breastfeeding mothers that has high levels of lipase. Since I only go in once a week, the majority of milk I pump is going to be a week old. During this first week, we are going to offer him some of the milk pumped while I was at work to see how many days he is willing to accept it. I pump the amount he takes from the bottle, so he will have something acceptable to eat the next time I go in.

While I would like to preserve the benefits of live leukocytes in my milk, my little man finds the taste below his standards after about 24 hours of refrigeration. My pumped milk has to go straight into the freezer. I am hoping the immediate freezing will keep it tasty for at least a week so he doesn’t decide to fast again. We’ll see how the next week goes!