Discovering that your baby won’t drink any of your freezer stash because you have high lipase in your breast milk can be devastating. Going forward, you can scald your breast milk after pumping so that your baby will drink it, but what to do with the milk that’s already frozen? Here are a few ways to get baby drink high lipase breast milk.

baby drinking a bottle with text overlay How to Get Your Baby to Take High Lipase Breast Milk

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If you have high lipase, you should start scalding your freshly pumped breast milk now. Here’s a tutorial on how to do it, step by step. But what about your freezer stash?

Can you scald previously frozen breast milk?

Unfortunately, no. Scalding only works for fresh milk (and the fresher the milk, the better your results will be).

Therefore, you may have to get creative to get your baby to drink breast milk that doesn’t taste good due to high lipase.

How to get your baby to drink high lipase breast milk

Breast milk with high lipase is perfectly safe for babies to drink – it just tastes bad.

Here are six different things that you can try if you find out that your frozen milk is high in lipase to make it more palatable to your baby.

1. Mix with fresh milk

This method is the most likely to be successful. To do this, mix “lipase milk” with fresh milk to dilute the soapy taste.

Start with a bottle of mostly fresh milk, and add a splash of lipase milk. If your baby will take that, try adding a little more the next time until you get to half lipase/half fresh breast milk.

Pros:

  • Many babies will take mixed milk

Cons:

  • If baby doesn’t take the mixed milk, you have to throw it all out
  • Feeding frozen milk can be a hassle, and you may have to do this method frequently to use up your frozen milk.

Here’s an unscientific poll that I did on Instagram, showing that mixing milk worked for the majority of babies at least sometimes:

screenshot of instagram poll: mixed milk works for us! 19%, it works sometimes 8%, thumbs down 7%, show me the results - 67%

More info on mixing breast milk here.

2. Add a drop of non-alcoholic vanilla

Some moms in our Facebook group have reported that their baby would take their high lipase breast milk after a drop of non-alcoholic vanilla was added to it.

(Note: I searched everywhere for research or studies about the safety of this and could not find any information. However, many moms reported getting the okay from their pediatricians. Please ask yours before trying this method.)

Pros:

  • Easy enough to try and do regularly

Cons:

  • Need to get the okay from a pediatrician before trying

Here’s another unscientific poll that I did on Instagram, showing that vanilla worked about half of the time:

screenshot of instagram poll: vanilla works great! 6%, not sure, it works sometimes: 2%, thumbs down 5%, show me the results 87%

3. Try frozen milk from a different time

If you have a big freezer stash with breast milk that you pumped over a period of months, try milk from different time periods – don’t just give up after trying a few bottles.

Sometimes, newer milk may not be as affected and your baby will take it. Other times, the amount of lipase in the milk you pumped might have gotten worse over time, so the older milk might be fine.

Also, sometimes how quickly the milk was frozen may make a difference. Milk that was frozen right away versus sitting in the fridge for a few days first might not be as affected.

Just experiment and try bags from different times before giving up on your whole freezer stash.

Pros:

  • You might be able to give baby some milk!

Cons:

  • It might require a lot of experimentation and frustration (on both your and baby’s part) to find milk he’ll take

4. Try it when baby is really hungry

Most of us will settle for something we’re not thrilled with when we’re hungry and it’s all that’s available.

You can try feeding the lipase milk (maybe mixed or maybe not, depending on how strenuous your baby’s objection is) first thing in the morning when they are the most hungry and see if it makes a difference.

If he won’t take it after a few minutes, then it’s not going to work and you can feed a fresh bottle of breast milk or formula instead.

Pros:

  • If it works, this might be easier over time than constantly mixing frozen milk with fresh

Cons:

  • If it doesn’t work, the experiment won’t be very fun for anyone involved

5. Try different temperatures

Sometimes a warmer bottle will do the trick.

Obviously, you don’t want to make it too hot for your baby, but if you’re serving lukewarm or room temperature milk, try making it a little bit warmer to see if that helps.

Pros:

  • If it works, it is an easy solution

Cons:

  • This is less likely to work and more something you can try out of desperation

6. Keep trying

Even if none of the above strategies work, keep trying every week or so. Babies change so fast! Yours might refuse lipase milk with extreme prejudice in June and take it in July. You never know.

Once your baby is taking solid foods, you can also mix the lipase breast milk into it as a way to use some of it up.

Finally, if nothing else works, you may be able to donate your lipase milk to a milk bank. Many babies receiving donor milk are fed through a feeding tube, so the taste isn’t an issue.

Have you struggled with getting your baby to take milk high in lipase? Tell us what happened in the comments!

Note: Finding out you have excess lipase can be super stressful. Rebekah Hoffer has written a fantastic, affordable e-book about her personal experience with it, including how she managed scalding milk on a day-to-day basis, what she did with her “lipase milk,” and all the emotions she went through. It also has some printable sheets you can use to test your lipase milk to see how long it takes to go off. I think it’s a great investment if you have just discovered you have excess lipase as you figure out your system going forward. You can check it out here. 





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