Freeze Drying Breast Milk: Preserving Liquid Gold

Breast milk, often hailed as liquid gold, is crucial for a baby’s development, offering an optimal mix of nutrients, antibodies, and enzymes vital for growth and immunity. It's essential to preserve this invaluable resource, especially for situations when fresh breast milk isn't available.

The Shortcomings of Conventional Preservation Methods

Currently, breast milk preservation methods have significant limitations:

• Room Temperature: Lasts only a few hours before spoilage risks increase.
• Refrigerator: Safe for up to 4 days, making it a short-term solution.
• Freezer: Extends breast milk's life to about 6 months but requires careful temperature management.
• Deep Freezer: Can preserve breast milk for up to 12 months; however, this method is contingent on continuous power supply, and any disruption can lead to spoilage.

The challenge with even deep freezing is the finite preservation timeline and dependency on electricity. During power outages or equipment failures, stored milk can spoil, which I've unfortunately experienced firsthand.

The Advantages of Freeze Drying Breast Milk

Freeze drying transforms breast milk into a powdered form, significantly extending its shelf life without the need for constant refrigeration. This method not only preserves nearly all the nutritional content of breast milk but also offers versatile storage solutions for extended periods. The resulting freeze-dried breast milk powder can be easily reconstituted with water for feeding infants or discreetly mixed into foods like yogurt for older children who might reject liquid breast milk. This dual-purpose functionality makes it a highly adaptable option for ensuring children continue to receive the benefits of breast milk at different stages of their growth.

Demonstrating the Process with Stay Fresh Freeze Dryers

For today's demonstration, we're utilizing the Stay Fresh Standard Freeze Dryer, using regular milk as a stand-in to showcase the process of freeze drying breast milk.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Preparation:

   • Collect no more than 150ml of milk into each storage bag. Keeping the amount small ensures a thinner layer once frozen, which facilitates more efficient freeze drying.
   • Place the filled bags flat in the freezer on a smooth, flat surface. This maximizes surface contact with the freeze dryer trays, promoting quicker and more even freeze drying.
   

2. Optimizing Freeze Dryer Settings:

   

   When working with breast milk, it's essential to adjust certain settings to optimize the results. These settings can be modified by pressing the ‘Setting’ button either before starting or immediately after the process begins.

   • Initial Target Pressure: Reduce the initial target pressure from default 550mTorr to 300 mTorr. This lower pressure setting helps improve drying efficiency, particularly for layers that do not contact the tray surface well.
   • Maximum Shelf Temperature: Lower the maximum shelf temperature from default 120°F to 100°F. This is important to preserve delicate nutrients in breast milk, such as immunoglobulins, which are sensitive to heat.
   • Final Dry Hours: Increase the final drying time from the standard 7 hours to 20 hours, as frozen breast milk generally requires more time to completely dry because of insufficient contact between the frozen milk and tray.

   Load empty trays into the freeze dryer, press the 'Frozen Food' button and press ‘start’.

3. Freeze Drying:

   
   • After shelf temperature drop to under 0°F , place the milk on the freeze dryer trays with the flat side facing down, and load the trays back into the freeze dryer.
   • Press the ‘Food in Chamber’ button and let the freeze dryer do the rest of the work.

4. Post-Processing Checks and Storage:

   
   • After freeze drying finished, use a knife to cut open the milk blocks and check if it is still frozen inside.
   • If not fully dry, put the breast milk back, press ‘back to finaldry’ button and add a few more hours to the cycle and let it dry more.
   • Once you are certain that the milk is completely dry, crush it into a powder and promptly seal it in mylar bags to protect against moisture.

Note: It's crucial to first experiment with regular milk to fine-tune the settings for your specific freeze dryer model. Preserving breast milk is more complex than processing typical fruits or candies, so we do not recommend freeze drying breast milk as your initial batch. Gain some experience with your machine using less sensitive materials to ensure the best results when you begin working with breast milk.

Why Choose Stay Fresh?

Stay Fresh freeze dryers provide reliable, user-friendly options for those new to freeze drying while offering customizable settings for experienced users. This balance makes them an ideal choice for preserving valuable nutrients in breast milk, ensuring that parents have access to a safe, long-term food storage solution for their children.

By understanding and leveraging the capabilities of a Stay Fresh freeze dryer, parents can confidently store breast milk, ensuring their children receive the best nutrition possible, anytime it’s needed.