Breastmilk icecream

[gosling.livejournal.com]

I am planning on making breast-milk icecream with rintrahroars, surrealestate and any other nursing moms who are interested in contributing. (Actually it will need to be more like gelato if we don't use any non-human milk I suspect, as separating out additional cream seems impractical.)


I'm asking for advice from folks who have done this in the past and also letting anyone who wants to contribute milk to know ahead of time so she can start stockpiling a bit to bring if she would like. (I plan on expressing as much as I can on site, but with a voracious nursing toddler I'm not sure how much that will be.) There seems to be a shortage of good recipes that I can find, but I suspect someone will have useful suggestions here. I'd prefer not to use any non-human milk, and ideally not add any sugar. (Human milk is quite sweet, far more so than goat or cow's milk is.) Also, I want to pasteurize it in is easy a method as possible, so suggestions for that are useful too. (All this may well have to be done with a squirming toddler on my back.)

Comments

[gosling.livejournal.com]

They actually screen *and* pasteurize usually. It does change the nutrients somewhat and removes many of the immune factors, but since a lot of milk banks are primarily for premature babies and other infants in the NICU they
tend to be super cautious. It is still far, far easier for an infant to digest and obtain nutrition from than any other source, which is particularly a concern with extra-fragile infants.

Pasteurization will kill pretty much any microbes of concern if done properly, regardless of the mammal from which the milk originated. It will not, however, probably remove or neutralize any problematic medication that
transfers into the milk. (There aren't many that do in quantities sufficient to be an issue for most newborns, let alone anyone older, and I have the list generally used as a guideline by lactation related professionals. This
reminds me, however, that I need to tactfully screen for that.)

It will also make the milk spoil much more quickly than raw milk does (as it removes the factors that inhibit bacterial growth), hence ideally it would be pasteurized close to the point it was actually turned into ice-cream.

I personally wouldn't consider pasteurized milk from any mammal to be a form of fluid bonding, but folks might want to consider their own comfort levels and definitions.