Frozen EBM and childcare

Hi there,

Has anyone sent their bub along to childcare with frozen EBM? I'm not sure if I should trust them to defrost the right way and to heat up the right way (as in, not the microwave).

My bub will be 11 months when he goes to child care 3 days a week. We have a freezer supply of EBM. I have been expressing full time since his birth and intend to stop at the time he goes to child care and just use my freezer supplies which will take him through to 12 months. I won't have fresh EBM for him at this time. He will move to formula at 12 months due to weight gain issues rather than another type of milk. Should I just send formula for his childcare days or do you think the staff will manage the EBM well?

i would send the ebm. you could print out info on how to defrost, or have it so it is kinda ready for when bub needs a feed.

I would just send the EBM myself. How do you have it stored?

I used to have mine in icecubes, so I could make up a bottle with the cubes still frozen, leave it in the fridge overnight to defrost and then send it to CC ready to go. They just popped it in their fridge and warmed it up when needed.

Personally, I think if you can defrost it yourself you should. Then you know it has been done properly.

Take a look HERE - includes some info you could print out for daycare (there's a link at the bottom to download in pdf form too)
Mothers' Direct also sells booklets on breastfeeding and returning to work and expressing and storing breast milk, that you might want to buy.

yep I did what Miss E did most of the time.
Child care centres should be good at following the guidelines- they look after a LOT of kids... when i needed them to mine always defrosted and heated how i asked...
print out how you want it done, ior write it up and they should follow it.
but for the most part you could defrost yoruself like Miss E suggested

DS went with EBM and it was fine. He was 9mths when he started and we filled out a sheet of what he drank, ate etc. We just highlighted it was EBM not formula and to heat in the bottle warmer and all was fine. They had a microwave there for other bottles, but there were occasions I arrived early and they were heating up DS's in the bottle warmer so I never had any concerns they were doing it wrong.

Is CC allowed to use a microwave to heat bottles??

I didn't send EBm, but I was assured at the 2 my children have attended that all bottles are heated with a bottle warmer..

Yes, I should ask if they have a bottle warmer.

I just have to work the defrosting part out and consider the fridge life of it.

I never sent frozen, only defrOsted Ebm in the bottle. I was always worried they'd defrost it incorrectly etc. I highlighted that it was Ebm and they were excellent though. Very supportive and careful to let me know what she was and wasn't drinking which helped me to reduce any waste.

Hi Lisa,

There are actually guidelines in the regulations and within policies for childcare at least I know there is for NSW, I am pretty sure it should be the same there to, that they are not allowed to heat bottles in the microwave as it heats unevenly so they should be using bottle warmers all of the time anyway.. Hope this helps

When I used CC (many moons ago) they didn't use microwaves to heat bottles. They had a rather large collection of bottle warmers ;)