Expert: ruth kraft - 11/6/2010

Question
hi there

my baby is 41 days old and i occasionally use a breast pump
i hope there is no side effect on my breasts and on milk
supply,also i would like to know can i store breast milk at
room temperature for using it at night or is it important to refrigerate.

Answer
occasionally using a pump will not effect your milk that much. a couple times a week will do very little  :)  Any time you give the baby a bottle of breasmilk though you should be pumping. So if you go out to dinner and the baby gets 2 bottles of milk, you should be pumping twice so that your milk stays where it needs to be.

You can store milk at 8 hours room temp IF it is fresh milk. Only a few hours if it has been thawed and rewarmed.  8 days in the refrigerator and when fresh. Frozen for 6 months. Once dethawed , its good for 24 hours.

I hope that helped!