Helen notes, << I have been telling my patients that breastmilk is good in the refrigerator for 72 hours. Has that changed? I have been reading in the digest 5 - 8 days. >> There have been two further studies -- one saying 5 days, and a later one saying 8 days. My own personal opinion is that you can store the milk until it doesn't taste or smell good. Do we worry about a carton of cow's milk and how many days it has been in the fridge? I don't -- if I think it has been there awhile, I do the sniff test -- if it's yukky, I throw it out. We worry about the breastmilk going "bad" or losing some of the protective factors (immunoglobulins, antiinfectives, vitamins, etc etc), but if it loses a bit of this and that, is formula ever better? Perhaps the moral of the story is to relax a bit about it? Freeze the milk if you aren't going to use it in the next week, leave it in the fridge if you are??? Jan