OMG the Fridge was Off

This morning, we were shocked to find out that the fridge is not on. Agnes took out some frozen waffles to toast for Isabel and realized they were defrosted.

You may think well, what’s the big deal? Maybe some food was spoiled but that happens. Well, if you are a breastfeeding mom, you may understand what level of stress I may have experienced the instant I heard this news. You see, I have been working hard for the last 4 months to store up breast milk for LingLing (about 2 oz extra a day). So I had about 30 bags of 5 oz of frozen milk stored in the freezer. Frozen breast milk once thawed must be used with in 24-48 hours. You CANNOT refreeze. What ever you don’t use, you LOSE.

So when I found out the fridge was off, my first thought is OMG, I just lost all the milk I worked 4 months daily to store!

We tried to figure out what happened as we realize the dial on the freezer was turned to off. So immediately we knew what happened but not when. Isabel must have been playing with the knob as any curious little girl and turned it off without knowing what it does. After some questioning, we found out she turned it off around 8pm last night which is about 12 hours before we found out!!!

I was in shocked and luckily Agnes and Jaime were more proactive. Jaime researched online about how long we can keep the milk and Agnes suggested we call Dr Pete as his wife is a lactation consultant and could tell us what we can salvage. Luckily I snapped out a little by then and thought perhaps we can separate the thawed milk from the still frozen part of the milk in the freezer. You see at least the fridge was still cold for awhile after Isabel turned it off so the frozen milk was still about 75% solid.

We were lucky Pete was home and got the advice from his wife. She told us we need to pour out the liquid part of the thawed milk in a container and only keep the frozen part in the freezer. The frozen part should still be ok for Lingling for future consumption (1-3 months). The liquid part we should keep in the back of the fridge where it’s coldest and Lingling should eat it in the next 48 hours.

We also had about 25 oz of fresh milk in the fridge that is now a bit more like room temperature, so we are going to give that to Lingling today and give her the thawed milk (about 20 oz) tomorrow. I will just end up pumping today and tomorrow instead of feeding Alexis directly. Luckily LIngling eats about 25 oz a day so all in all we may end up not losing any milk – hopefully!

I had a long talk with Isabel. I know she didn’t know what she was doing so we didn’t punish her, but I just wanted to make sure she understand that she should NOT do it again and why it’s so serious. As she is a kid, she may still forget, so now we will probably always keep an eye on the fridge dial to make sure she didn’t forget.

Ahhh, life with two kids – some days there is more excitement than I would like, but every moment is still very precious.

Lei