Heating up Breastmilk on the Go?

You can buy a bottle warmer and get an inverter for the car. The inverter plugs into the cigarette lighter and gives you one or two regular plugs for items.

I'm with some of the other moms. I bought one of the bottle warmers by Munchkin that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I loved it. My daughter was 3 months when we moved here from maine and would NOT take a cold bottle. So that thing was a life saver. A very good investment.

If you are in a car you can get a bottle warmer that adapts to the car outlet. Hope you are going to be near a car at least!

You've gotten a lot of answers to your question. Those are great if you absolutely HAVE to warm your bottle. My advice (from experience) is to try to encourage your child to eat/drink more room temp foods and liquids. It has saved me lots of headaches. Just let the breastmilk thaw to room temp and give it to him. I have taught my daughter to eat baby food (homemade and store bought) at room temp or even cold (from her lunchbox with an icepack). It makes traveling or even just running errands so much easier on both of you. If you're rushed and tensed trying to find someway to heat his lunch, your little one will be tense too.

Good luck and I hope I've helped some!

P.S. FYI, sometimes when it's hot out and she gets a bottle instead of nursing, my little one actually prefers for her bottle to be a little cool. I think it's refreshing for her.

If you have access to hot boiled water (say in a restaurant) just add a little to your milk to warm it to make it pleasant. Try to travel with a small flask of boiled water and you can just add a bit of hot water to heat the milk instead of messing about with a warm bowl or cup, etc.
You can help to re-warm frozen breast milk by placing the container in a bowl of hot water if you are at home. If you are out in the car and have taken frozen milk, it will all depend on the weather how long it thaws.

I agree with the other mom who said to let your baby get used to eating room temperature foods. We did this with our son & it made life so much easier!

We lived in West TX when he was a baby, and the bottle warmer you could plug into the car was a great help when it was freezing outside! Someone also suggested to us at the time to get those hand warmers from Academy or REI, wherever, and to use those to warm the bottles. I never tried it, but a lot of my friends swore by it.

If I was on the go but near a restroom or sink, I would run the milk under hot water for awhile. If I was in a resteraunt, I've asked for a tall glass of hot water before and set the bottle in it to warm. I've gone so far as to sit on a cool bottle, warming it with my thighs or arms against my body. There are lots of things to do.

You can bring a room temp bottle with you and it should be good for up to 2 hours if it's not kept HOT (like in a car) but in a cooler without ice. And if all else fails, you can give a baby cool milk. They might reject it, but probably not.

GOod luck and congratulations on your new baby.

grab a cup of hot water from a gas station, restaurant, coffee shop and stick the bottle in it. It should be ready pretty fast. I wouldn't let it go to room temperature. Shelf life is short even in the freezer but even shorter in the fridge and out!

This might sound old fashioned, but depending on how cold the milk was to begin with...fridge vs freezer, if I needed to, I would place the bottle between my breasts and warm it that way, esp if traveling and unable to breastfeed infant. I never had any problems with the milk going bad, doctors were pleased with the idea, and the milk was sure to be warm...at least body temperature warm for my baby.

If the breast milk was in the fridge, you can usually get it warm enough from warm water in a focet. Especially if you keep your pumped milk in bags vs. straight to bottles. A thermas also works well, b/c you can keep it warm for longer periods of time. At restaurants, I would sometimes get them to poor hot coffee water in a cup and I could dip the bag of breast milk in the cup until it warmed up enough. Hope this helps. Congrats on becoming a new mommy.

If you're at a restaurant just ask for a cup of hot water and stick the bag in the water for a minute or so. Breastmilk doesn't need to be warmed up that much! Breastmilk is supposed to be okay for 10 hours. But I think just 2-3 is better, personally. The breastmilk bags made by lansinoh have a lot of breastmilk facts on them...they were my favorite brand of bags...I'd tried Medela and Gerber as well and liked the lansinoh the best. Found them at Target.
Goodluck!!

I went to BRU and bought one of the car bottle heater thingeys and used it "on the go". I just poured the cold breastmilk into a bottle and warmed the bottle.

HTH!

My son was in the NICU for 6 days and by the time he was out wanted no part of me for feeding. I tried until he was 6 weeks and then went to exclusively pumping and him eating from a bottle. So...

If I knew my son would eat while we were out, I would always just leave it out after pumping before leaving home. Either that or just take it out of the fridge before leaving so it would get room temperature before he was due to feed. There was a few occasions that he ate milk that was a little colder than I would have liked but he didn't get tummy aches and seemed to do just fine.

I was surprised to figure out that room temperature is colder than I had imagined, which he ate often if he was due to feed a short while after me pumping.

Target has a bottle warmer that goes plugged into a car's cigarette lighter... I bought one for a friend of mine and she loved it... hope this helps.

You can buy a bottle warmer that plugs into your cigarette lighter in the car!
If you don't have a car you can get hot hot water from most restaurants and coffee shops to warm it up in.

They make a bottle warmer that plugs into your car lighter. I used one for my kids because I was always on the go and we took a lot of really long car trips when they were little. It takes a little while to warm though. I kept their milk in a cooler until I needed it. Then I warmed it up. I hope this helps!

You can always run hot tap water over it to warm if that is all you have available. For information call Medela 1-800-TELL YOU or visit www.medela.com
Here is a chart I have from them
Freshly expressed breast milk can be stored at room temp for 4 hours 66-72 degrees F; in a cooler with 3 frozen ice packs for 24hours at 59 degrees; in the refrigerator for 5-7 days at 32-39 degrees; self-stored contained refrigerator freezer unit 3-4 months; deep freeze 6-12 months at 0 degrees
Never refreeze breast milk, and thawed breastmilk can be stored in the fridge for 24hours.

I never heated my milk, but if it's freshly expressed it can sit out at room temperature for 4 hours. I would thaw it in hot water and serve it immediately. Thawed breastmilk cannot be stored at room temp.

One thing I did on a recent car trip was pour some really hot hot water into a thermos just before leaving and brought along an empty mug. When the time was near I poured the hot water into the mug, then added bottle, and soon enough the breast milk was warmed up.

They also have bottle warmers and you could get a car adapter for it. But what I did above worked just fine. If the trip is even longer and you'll be stopping for lunch just ask the restaurant staff for a mug of hot water and do the same thing. Then ask them to refill your thermous before leaving.

Ok. We "tried" the Munchkin plug into the cigarette lighter bottle warmer... BUT... my son would go from completely happy to starving in about 2 minutes flat. While a great concept, it just took way too long for it to even get the chill off the bottle. That made him miserable and us even more so!

Ordering hot water while at a restaurant worked great and also just taking freshly expressed room temp milk.

Good luck!

They make a bottle warmer that has those packs in it that heat up and get hard when you activate them (sort of like you would use for hiking or camping in the cold). You stick the bottle down in the middle of it and click the little disc to activate the warmer. No plugs necessary! You just boil the heating pack when you're finished with it and it turns liquid again to be re-used. They sell them at Babies R Us. It's called the Grab n Go Bottle Warmer. Here is the link:

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2401841

They don't get it super warm, but warm it up better than the car warmer that I had and you don't have to be in the car to use it! Hope this helps.

I always would use a large yogurt container and fill it up with hot water. If the water from the tap wasn't warm enough I'd just keep the water coming. Sometimes on the go, I'd order hot tea, put that in the yogurt container, float the bottle etc...

I always used the Lansinoh storage bags, and used really warm water from the faucet to heat the outside of the bag. I would put it in a cup. I really think that is the best, safest way. I like the Thermos ideas the other posters had, though I never tried that (we only fed bottles of expressed milk when my son was at my mom's house whie I worked, so she always had a sink!).

As far as breastmilk storage, this is a link to the kellymom website, which is the best research based site about breastfeeding, IMO http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/milkstorage.html
I hope that helps you! That states it all better than I could!

I agree it's not necessary to heat the milk unless baby absolutely won't take it. Hot tap water is all I used to warm my sons breastmilk. I'm sure you know not to use a microwave anyway. Using hot tap water also assures that the milk will not be too hot.

According the experts on www.babycetner.com breastmilk stays fresh in the fridge for 24 hours. So if you can take a small cooler or insulated lunch bag to pack an ice pack with the bottles you won't have to worry.

http://www.babycenter.com/404_how-long-will-breast-milk-s...

According to kidshealth.org breastmilk can be stored at room tempature fro 4-8 hours as long as the temp does not exceed 77 degrees fahrenheit.

http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/feeding/breastfeed_st...