How mothers handle and store expressed breast milk

The objective of this presentation is to describe how mothers handle and store expressed breast milk relative to recommendations for infant health. The study cohort consisted of mothers participating in the 2005–2007 Infant Feeding Practices Study II (IFPS II) who fed their infant expressed breast milk at 3 months of age (n=1071), 5 months of age (n=675) and 7 months of age (n=443). IFPS II is a national, longitudinal study of women from pregnancy through their infant's first year. We conducted analyses using SAS 9.1. We compared these results to those from an earlier analysis of mothers' infant formula handling behaviors. The results of our analysis indicate that most mothers follow protocol from the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine for storing and serving expressed breast milk. For example, only 4% refrigerated breast milk longer than recommended and fewer held it at room temperature for more than 6-8 hours. An exception is mothers' use of a microwave oven to heat expressed breast milk, which puts infants at risk for burns and destroys antibodies. Depending on the age of the infant, about 8-10% of mothers heated their breast milk in a microwave oven. That most mothers follow recommendations for handling expressed breast milk is in contrast to our earlier analysis that showed many mothers in the same study did not follow safe practices when preparing infant formula.