When you start feeding stored (expressed or pumped) breast milk to your baby, the first question that you may have is how to know if breast milk has gone bad? Breast milk contains several nutrients, immunological components, and enzymes. Upon storage, changes in one or more of these components cause alteration in the breast milk’s appearance, smell, and taste. Several parents report stored breast milk tasting and smelling soapy, while others describe it as metallic. In either case, understanding why these changes occur can help you learn the signs that indicate that the milk has gone bad. Read on to know the signs that tell the breast milk has gone bad and ways to prevent spoilage.
Signs Indicating The Breast Milk Has Gone Bad
Breast milk’s taste and smell vary from one mother to another. Therefore, knowing the common signs indicating milk spoilage can prevent you from feeding your baby spoiled milk. Here are some ways you can determine milk’s fitness for consumption.
1. Appearance
Upon storage, breast milk typically separates into two layers — milk and cream layer. The fat rises to the top to form the cream layer, while the bottom layer is called the milk layer (1). When milk is still fit for consumption, a quick swirl causes the layers to dissolve (2). However, if your breast milk appears chunky or maintains separate layers even after swirling a couple of times, the milk has likely gone bad.
2. Smell
Breast milk’s odor could vary among mothers and even across feeding sessions. These changes are based on several factors, such as the mother’s diet and medications. Besides, an off or soapy smell is a relatively common occurrence for mothers with high lipase-containing breast milk (3). In such a case, determining spoilage isn’t easy. However, a simple test could help. For the test, freeze a small amount of your breast milk for a week. After a week, thaw the milk and check its scent.
If you have high lipase milk, your milk will likely smell soapy, metallic, or fishy. However, the milk is fit for the baby’s consumption. You can deactivate lipase activity by scalding breast milk.
If the milk smells sour or rancid, the milk has undergone chemical oxidation. Discarding such milk is advisable. A diet rich in PUFA or rancid fats and water containing free copper and iron ions could cause oxidation, giving a peculiar smell to breast milk.
3. Taste
If breast milk tastes rancid or sour, it has likely gone bad. You can perform the same test as above — store the milk for a week and evaluate the taste changes. Soapy-, metallic-, or fishy-tasting breast milk is likely due to high lipase activity. On the other hand, a sour or rancid taste indicates chemical oxidation. In general, breast milk stored longer than recommended may indicate that milk might have gone bad. Freshly pumped or expressed milk stored in the refrigerator for more than four days or previously frozen and thawed milk stored for more than a day are likely to go bad (4).
What Happens When A Baby Consumes Spoiled Breast Milk?
You may sometimes not know that your stored breast milk has gone bad. In such instances, accidental feeding of spoiled milk is possible. A baby may exhibit the following signs when they ingest spoiled breast milk. Some other symptoms that may arise due to spoiled milk consumption are dehydration leading to excessive sleepiness and inactivity, dark-colored urine, and fewer wet nappies than usual. If you suspect your baby has any health issues and related signs due to breast milk consumption, consult a pediatrician for guidance.
Tips To Prevent Expressed/Pumped Breast Milk From Spoiling
Below are the recommended guidelines to express or pump and store breast milk to maintain its quality (4) (8).
Cool freshly expressed milk for 30 minutes in the fridge first Add freshly expressed milk to frozen milk only if the amount of fresh milk is lesser than the frozen milk Use the mixed milk within the time limit of the oldest expressed milk.
