This is a tragic story that any parent who breastfeeds, breastfeeds, or expresses breast milk will relate to. One afternoon, shortly after my daughter was born, I was sitting in front of the TV unscrewing a milk bottle from its flange after pumping for 15 minutes.
Something on the screen caught my eye and my finger slipped, spilling the entire contents of the bottle down the front of my pants. It was three years ago, and I still remember feeling completely defeated at that moment.
Why a breastfeeding mom posted on Reddit
I tell this story because wasting breast milk is truly heartbreaking for producing parents. It’s a waste of time and energy. You’re throwing away the hard-earned nutrients your baby needs to grow. That’s why I completely empathize with the furious mother who recently posted on Reddit about the disappointment she felt after her husband microwaved the breast milk he had been saving for her 3-month-old baby.
The mother wrote that being separated from her daughter after returning to work was a “stressful and tearful” process. This determined mother spent three months of her maternity leave stocking up on frozen breast milk. She is proud of her efforts, but said it took a “tremendous amount of effort” to “collect milk, eat well, stay hydrated, (and) cope with the physical strain.”
So before returning to work, she explained to her husband how to properly thaw breast milk in warm water. This is perfectly reasonable, since how to properly store and use expressed breast milk is quite complex. It’s no surprise that he needed to catch up. She also wrote that she explicitly reminded me to never heat breast milk in the microwave.
Why microwaving breast milk is not recommended
It was captured one evening after he had taken care of the baby alone over the weekend. Mom was at home and ready to feed her baby. Then she saw something that made her stomach drop. That’s when dad took the baby bottle out of the microwave. It turns out he had been heating her breast milk in the microwave all weekend.
It is never a good idea to heat breast milk in the microwave. Rapid reheating in this manner can create hot spots inside the bottle, which can burn the inside of your baby’s mouth. In particular, heating breast milk in the microwave can also burn some of the essential nutrients it contains.
You may not have spilled the milk, but breast milk that has been drained of nutrients isn’t exactly useful either. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends avoiding microwave use altogether and instead thawing foods gradually under warm water.
Why was the mother so angry with her husband?
“I felt completely disrespected. All the time, effort, and physical sacrifice I put into Milk, he literally did everything I asked him not to do,” she wrote.
Listen, when you’re caring for a newborn, it’s not uncommon to feel like your days are stacking up and your head is foggy. You are forgetful. You’re too thin. Understood. However, learning how to properly feed your baby is the bare minimum. Dad should have done his best to listen to mom, who is deeply immersed in the world of breastfeeding.
One commenter agreed with her position and shared that she too experienced something similar. “I was shocked when my husband accidentally left an 8 oz. on the counter overnight,” they wrote. “Don’t you understand how hard my body is working to make that? And it’s not just about the milk. It’s about not being listened to.”
The father ultimately made all sorts of excuses for ignoring her instructions (including, inexplicably, “Google said it was fine”), but in the end OP wrote that she still felt “he went against my wishes, ignored my efforts, and doubled down on me when I was already mentally exhausted.”
It’s not surprising to me that she feels disrespected, and I don’t blame her. It would be one thing if Dad learned his lesson and apologized for potentially wasting even an ounce of breast milk, but he couldn’t admit he was wrong. Have the courtesy of listening to your child and respect the effort you put into caring for them.
That’s the least we can do.
