Pumping With Excess Lipase (Photo Tutorial On Scalding Breast Milk)

If your frozen breast milk smells or tastes off – sour, soapy, or like metal – you may have something called excess lipase in your breast milk. This is annoying but manageable – here’s how to scald your breast milk and manage exclusively pumping with excess lipase.

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What does it mean to have excess lipase in breast milk?

Lipase is an enzyme that breaks down the fats in your breast milk. This helps your baby digest the fatty parts of your milk.

However, extra lipase can speed up this process, which can make the milk taste sour or soapy after some time has passed. Other descriptions include breast milk smelling like vomit, or eggs, or metallic.

Excess lipase is not an issue while nursing or feeding fresh breast milk, only milk that has been stored for a while.

Breast milk with excess lipase is actually safe for your baby to drink! However, he or she may refuse it because of the taste.

Does having excess lipase affect refrigerated milk, or just frozen milk?

It can affect any milk that’s not fed right away, but because lipase acts over time, the newer the milk, the less likely it is that lipase will be an issue.

How do I know whether or not there is too much lipase in my breast milk?

If your baby refuses your frozen or refrigerated milk, but will take your fresh breast milk, it’s a good idea to taste a drop or two of the milk your baby won’t eat and compare it to a few drops of your fresh breast milk.

If your milk tastes different, excess lipase is the most likely culprit – particularly if the older milk tastes sour or soapy.

How quickly will excess lipase make my milk go off?

This is different for everyone – for some people, it’s within hours. Others only see it in older frozen milk.

To find out, one thing that you can try is testing your milk every hour to see when the taste starts to change.

This will be helpful in two ways – first, you can confirm it’s not an issue with your milk storage in general (such as your freezer not being cold enough).

Second, you can see how quickly you need to scald your breast milk. Scalding will allow you to store your milk for longer than you otherwise would.

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So scalding my breast milk will fix my excess lipase issue?

Yes, heating fresh breast milk very soon after pumping to about 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 degrees Celsius) will inactivate the lipase.

Doesn’t scalding breast milk remove the nutrition from it?

It may lower some nutrient levels and does destroy the antibodies, but as long as all of the milk your baby gets isn’t scalded, it should be okay. Talk to your pediatrician if you have any concerns.

After scalding, you can refrigerate or freeze the breast milk, and the taste won’t go off for a much longer period of time. (More info on how to scald breast milk below.)

Is exclusively pumping with excess lipase possible? Do I have to scald all of my milk?

If you are exclusively pumping with excess lipase, feeding freshly pumped milk whenever possible is your best bet, because you won’t need to scald the milk.

In addition to the extra work of scalding, there’s a decent amount of cleanup involved as well as the considerations about nutrition noted above.

To feed fresh milk while exclusively pumping, you can pump right after (or while) your baby eats, and then feed that milk at his next feeding a few hours later. Then you’d pump again, and keep repeating the cycle.

Obviously, you’ll want to make sure that the length of time your milk will be out (the time between pumping and feeding) is less than how long it takes it to go off, but for most people a few hours will be okay.

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I have a freezer stash and just discovered I have a lipase issue. What can I do?

Unfortunately, once milk has gone “off,” scalding the milk will not help. However, you may be able to convince your baby to take it.

(Remember, milk that tastes bad due to excess lipase is safe to drink. They just may not want to, for obvious reasons.)

Your best bet is to try mixing the “lipase milk” with fresh milk to see if your baby will take it. You can try any variation – fresh milk with just a splash of lipase milk to half and half, etc. The risk is that you might have to throw out the fresh milk that you use to experiment with this if your baby won’t take the mixture either.

More on ways to get your baby to take lipase milk here.

Even if your baby refuses to take it, your lipase milk does not have to go to waste. In most cases, you can probably donate it to a milk bank. Donor milk is often fed through a tube, so in those situations, the babies that use the milk aren’t tasting it anyway.

What is the best way for me to scald breast milk?

You can save newly pumped breast milk by scalding when it’s freshly pumped. Below is a photo tutorial on how to scald milk on the stovetop or using a bottle warmer without auto shut off. 

As noted above, there are two ways to do this, on the stovetop or in a bottle warmer.

On the Stovetop

To scald breast milk on the stovetop, you will need:

• A bowl or other container large enough to fit some ice and a bottle (for an ice bath)
• Ice
• A stainless steel bottle
• An instant read thermometer
• A clean saucepan
• A container (bottle or bag) to store your breast milk when you’re finished scalding it

Once you have all of that, follow the below steps to scald your milk.

1. Prepare an ice bath

Just put a bunch of ice and a little water in a small bowl.

2. Pour your freshly pumped breast milk into a clean saucepan on the stove.

3. Heat the milk to 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

An instant-read thermometer helps here – it’s not a bad idea to get one just for scalding breast milk. However, if you do use it for other things, it’s very important that you sterilize it before use.

There should be bubbles around the edges, but not a rolling boil.

4. Remove from heat

When the milk reaches 180 degrees, remove it from the heat and pour it into a stainless steel bottle in the ice bath. Use one of your flanges as a funnel to avoid spills.

5. Store scalded milk

After it’s cooled, put the milk into a storage container (a bottle or breast milk freezer bag) and immediately store it in the refrigerator or freezer.

Below is a short infographic on scalding breast milk that might be helpful to screenshot.

In a Bottle Warmer

To scald breast milk in a bottle warmer, you will need:

• A bowl or other container large enough to fit some ice and a bottle (for an ice bath)
• Ice
• A stainless steel bottle
• An instant read thermometer
• A bottle warmer without auto-shutoff (to allow you to heat to 180 degrees)
• A container (bottle or bag) to store your breast milk when you’re finished scalding it

Once you have all of that, follow the below steps to scald your milk.

1. Prepare an ice bath.

2. Put milk in the bottle warmer

Put your milk in a stainless steel bottle in the bottle warmer.

Use one of your flanges as a funnel to avoid spilling, and start the bottle warmer.

3. Monitor the temperature

Stir the milk using your (sterilized!) instant read thermometer until the temperature reaches 180 degrees.

4. Remove the bottle from the warmer

When the temperature reaches 180 degrees, remove the bottle from the bottle warmer and put it in the ice bath.

5. Store the milk

After it’s cooled, put the milk into a storage container (bottle or breast milk freezer bag) and immediately store it in the refrigerator or freezer.

Miscellaneous tips on scalding

Why use a stainless steel bottle instead of a regular one? I don’t like the idea of heating breast milk to that high of a temperature in plastic, even if it’s BPA-free, and stainless steel holds up better than glass to transferring between very hot liquid and an ice bath. However, you can experiment with other options if you like.

In terms of which method to use – I found the stovetop method much faster and easier than the bottle warmer, but a bottle warmer would probably be more workable at the office.

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. 

Have any tips for exclusively pumping with excess lipase? Leave them in the comments!

1. Williams, Christina. “Battling and Resolving Excess Lipase in Breastmilk.” https://www.sdbfc.com/blog/2012/9/4/battling-and-resolving-excess-lipase-in-breastmilk
2. Bonyata, Kelly, IBCLC. “My expressed breastmilk doesn’t smell fresh. What can I do?” https://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/milkstorage/lipase-expressedmilk/