Detective Work

There may be a common link between the following Ed-tendencies:

1) refusal to finish a bottle that he started happily a couple of hours before
2) refusal of refrigerated milk that is older than about a day (even though it should last 5-8 days in the fridge)
3) complete refusal of milk that has been frozen
4) sometimes grimacing when drinking milk from a bottle/cup

I've recently learned of an enzyme called lipase.  Lipase breaks down the fats in expressed milk.  This process makes the milk taste soapy and sour.  Some women have higher levels of this enzyme than others, and some babies are more sensitive to the taste change than others.  The more time since the milk has been expressed, the more of this breakdown occurs, and freezing the milk makes the fat break down a lot.

So what to do?

There are a combination of approaches that I'm going to try.

1) The lipase enzyme can be reduced by scalding the expressed milk before freezing/fridging it.  To scald, you put the milk in a pot and heat it until the edges are just starting to bubble, then quickly remove it from heat and put it in the fridge or freezer.  Sadly this would have no effect on the milk I have already frozen, so unless Ed someday decides that that milk is acceptable, it's likely useless to me.  However, it's still acceptable to human milk banks, if I decide I can't use it.

2) There may be a link between high levels of DHA and high levels of lipase.  I have been taking a DHA supplement since mid-pregnancy.  I've stopped today.

3) We can try to figure out if there is a particular timespan in which the taste of the milk changes.  This involves pumping some milk, splitting it out into sections, and seeing what the taste is like right away and over the course of several hours, and also putting some in the fridge and seeing what it tastes like the next day and the day after.

I'm eager to see what happens with this.  If Eddie will drink milk that has been scalded and then frozen, that will solve one of my current problems (how to have enough milk on a Sunday to both feed him and pump for the next day) and if the milk has been tasting bad, no wonder he doesn't want it.  Making it taste nicer may make him more likely to want the bottle.