Crying Over Spilt Milk

I dillied and dallied and tried to postpone the sad day as long as possible, but it was finally time to dump the frozen breast milk that I had hoarded in our freezer. Since it was approaching the six month mark and had been through a bit of a thaw when our refrigerator went on the blink right after Christmas, I knew it was no longer fit for baby consumption and had to go. Even so, it took me another month and a half before I could bring myself to remove it from the freezer.

You see, this isn't just the normal sad tale of good food gone bad. Although it always bums me out when I have to toss some severely frost-bitten food that I found lurking in the back of the freezer (a problem we have since remedied by purchasing a Food Saver), it isn't the same gut-wrenching sorrow that I feel when having to dispose of breast milk. I popped one container top after another and poured the liquid gold down the drain. Each bottle was marked with the day and time that the milk was pumped, so I could often remember what I was doing on that particular day. Here was the worried 3 a.m. pump when we thought Molly might have NEC. Here was the oh-so-thankful pump after we learned that she didn't. Here was the day Molly came home. Here was the only day we ever worried about Molly's weight gain. Here was one of the many post-"unsuccessful nursing session" pumps. Here was one half hour of my life gone ... and another and another and another. All of the milk and all of the memories that it brought back went sadly down the drain.

There is one bright side to this mournful, milky tale -- because I had to do the same thing (with even more milk) after I had Max, this time around I really wanted to avoid wasting the "good stuff." Happily, I managed to find a home for most of Molly's excess milk while it was still newly frozen. We knew of a preemie with GI issues who was in need of breast milk and we were able to arrange to send over 300 ounces of milk to her. Although Molly learned to nurse shortly after we shipped off the extra milk, I was still left with about 100 ounces that we were never able to use. I didn't have any supply issues this time around (just the opposite, in fact), so we never even had to touch the freezer stash.

Although I'm sure all the nursing (or pumping) moms out there understand the emotional value of that milk, for anyone who doesn't understand what the big deal is, I'll leave you with this interesting bit of information -- breast milk sells for about $3.00 an ounce. So, effectively, I just poured $300 down the drain -- and that's enough to make anybody cry. ;)