Much discusion on this has already occurred, so what follows may be
moot. I have been out of town and then unable to get on LACTNET for several
days, so am a bit behind and replying to a post at least 4 days old.

Refrigerated human milk has been shown to exhibit less degradation after 8
days than if comparable milk (also human) had been frozen!  So much for the
superiority of frozen milk.

Keep in mind as well, that the bactericidal elements in human milk continue
to work (although less effectively) following refrigeration when compared
with fresh (unrefrigerated) milk.

Also, artificial milk has NO elements in it to kill bugs.  One study (not
yet published) showed that ABM which has been exposed to a newborn's mouth
(and, presumably salivary secretions) grows bacteria within 30 minutes in
such profusion as to be unable to count!  Human milk does so, but much much
later-several hours.  Consider how ABM is routinely given in hospitals. How
many mothers (or RNs) toss out the rest of the 4 oz bottle after the first
feeding, which is what they SHOULD be doing to avoid giving the baby
subsequent feedings characterized by higher and higher counts of bacteria?

What is done in many NICUs? Are those volufeeds of 10-20 ccs also tossed or
"saved" for a while?  And what about the continuous infusion pumps?  I know
that some places have made sure that fat losses are minimized by the length
of the tubing and how they set up the syringes (top up rather than down to
make sure fat (which settles up) is pushed into baby).  But how many others
do this? And how many others change the tubing every 4 hours instead of
much later, after greater contamination is likely?

Use of fresh human milk is a far "cleaner" substance for the immature gut
than other substances which are THOUGHT to be clean, but really are not.

Am falling off the soapbox.  Ignore all of the above if it has already been
covered.




Def. of LC service: "We are all faced with a series of great opportunities
brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Homewood, IL)- [log in to unmask]
WEB PAGE: http://www.mcs.com/~auerbach/lactation.html
LACTNET archives http://library.ummed.edu/lsv/archives/lactnet.html