Excess lipase activity can happen to anyone. Here’s what you need to know about this breastfeeding challenge, and how nursing moms can overcome it! Have you heard of excess lipase activity?
Guest post by Rebekah of Simply Rebekah
I took a breastfeeding class before my baby was born and read several breastfeeding blogs. I had a lactation consultant help with the very first feeding. Though I was an educated mother, I was completely unprepared to handle the moment I found myself asking, “Why does my breast milk taste bad?”
My Story
My first baby often refused to take a bottle of expressed breastmilk when I left her with my husband or a babysitter. I assumed that I was doing something wrong. Maybe I needed to offer her a bottle more often. Did we need to try a different kind of bottle? I was at my wit’s end when I came home from a girls’ night out and found out that my husband struggled once again to feed my daughter the bottle of breast milk that I left for her. In a moment of frustration, I tasted the bottle of breast milk she had refused. It tasted horrible!
Immediately, I began searching online for answers. After some serious digging, I discovered that I had excess lipase activity in my expressed breast milk. This rare problem causes expressed breast milk to develop a bad taste over time.
Lipase is an enzyme that is in every woman’s breast milk. It helps digest the fats in the baby’s stomach. For some women this enzyme is a bit over active and starts to break down the fats in their expressed breast milk before it gets to the baby. This excess lipase activity is what causes the bad taste.
Through a lot of research, and many tears, I was able to move forward and figure out how to have a healthy breastfeeding relationship with my daughter that still allowed me to leave her with a babysitter.
Image by Simply Rebekah
The Importance of Tasting Your Breast Milk
Excess lipase activity can happen to anyone. There hasn’t been enough research done to determine why some women struggle with it and others don’t.
If you have any intentions of pumping breast milk, you need to do a taste test. Planning to keep a few bags of breast milk in your freezer for date night? Do a taste test. If you are a working mother who wants to build a large freezer stash, do a taste test.
Tasting your breast milk is the most important breastfeeding advice that you’ve likely never heard before.
How to “Test” Your Milk for Excess Lipase Activity
To “test” for excess lipase activity, keep a very small amount of expressed milk in your refrigerator and taste it every couple of hours for several days. If the taste doesn’t change after a week then you most likely do not have excess lipase activity. However, if the taste becomes offensive, then you should definitely start researching excess lipase activity.
There are many things that can make your breast milk taste different:
- diet
- vitamins and supplements
- medication
Those things may make your breast milk taste different, but they shouldn’t make your breast milk taste horrible. However, excess lipase activity does cause a horrible taste.
How to “Stop” Excess Lipase Activity
If you suspect that you have excess lipase activity, the first thing you need to do is take a deep breath. Don’t blame yourself, and don’t let this stop you from enjoying your breastfeeding experience. Although the breast milk has a bad taste, there is nothing wrong with the nutrition of the milk. It is perfectly safe to feed a baby milk that has been affected by excess lipase activity.
There isn’t a cure to stop breast milk from having excess lipase activity. However, there is a way to stop your expressed breast milk from developing the bad taste that excess lipase activity causes. Heat deactivates the lipase enzyme. By scalding your breast milk after pumping, you can prevent the bad taste from forming.
I’ve taken my experience with excess lipase activity and turned it into an eBook to help educate and encourage other breastfeeding mothers.
In Why Does My Breast Milk Taste Bad? you will find:
- My personal story and what happened when my second child was born.
- Step by step directions on how to scald your milk to stop the bad taste.
- Answers to 31 frequently asked questions.
- 8 suggestions on what to do with all of the bad-tasting breast milk in your freezer.
- Step by step information on how to donate your bad-tasting breast milk to a milk bank.
- Valuable information from Dr. Ruth Lawrence, the nation’s leading authority on breastfeeding
- Support, encouragement, and the knowledge that you are not alone.
Spread the Word
The sorrow that comes from discovering that your entire freezer stash of breast milk tastes bad can be prevented. Tell every mom and mom-to-be that you know how important it is for them to taste their breast milk. A simple taste test can make all the difference in the world to a pumping mom.
Does your breast milk taste bad? Have you ever “tested” it for excess lipase activity?
Rebekah Hoffer blogs at Simply Rebekah where she shares simple ways to make life a little bit easier. She shares everything from freezer friendly recipes to the secret to saving money on a new baby to her favorite “green” bath and body products.
Top image by Simply Rebekah
Kimberly
I experienced the same exact thing with my first. Could not figure out why he would NEVER take a bottle until one time I tasted the milk. Terrible! We thought it was a faulty freezer and went out that night and bought a deep freezer chest (turns out it was a huge blessing because that’s what started me on freezer cooking and blogging about it for the past two years now). I finally discovered the lipase issue with my next baby and have been scalding it ever since…now expecting baby #4! No one ever knows what in talking about, so it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who has this breast milk issue. 🙂
Rebekah from Simply Rebekah
Kimberly, you certainly are not alone! I remember thinking there was a problem with my freezer also. It is amazing how that freezer ended up changing your life. I love hearing the positive spin on it all.
Sarah Koontz {Grounded & Surrounded}
I have never heard of this before, nor did I ever think to taste my breastmilk. I had trouble producing enough so we had to switch to formula between the 4-6 month mark with both my kids. KILLED ME. I hated it, but my poor sweeties weren’t gaining milk. If I ever have another kiddo, I am definitely going to keep this in mind. Thank you so much.
Sandi
I also had issues with Lipase… Mine was so active that 10 minutes after pumping my milk would already start tasting bad… I started drinking an insane about of water and my milk would last a few hours at room temperature…I still could not refrigerate it because it would separate and “ruin” faster… I did try scalding it…and as amazing as it might sound…it still had a horrible taste after freezing…but I did not try this too many times due to the fact that my son constantly went through growth spurts…He was a chunk~ I’m expecting baby number 2 in 3 weeks and hoping that things will be different this time!
Rebekah from Simply Rebekah
Sandi, that is incredible. My milk lasted for 12 hours before the taste would go bad. I can’t imagine it only lasting for 10 minutes!
Dameon Sam
Heating breastmilk by microwave,,and to point of scalding can change the properties of the breast milk. It can take away some of the antibodies ..if not all of the good properties.
Rebekah from Simply Rebekah
I do not recommend using a microwave to scald breast milk, but when you properly use the stove or a bottle warmer the effects are small enough that is is still safe to feed your baby scalded breast milk.
Kristen
i had this same issue! Lost my entire freezer stash Id been pumping since she was born. Realized it right as I was going back to work 🙁 my question is though does this automatically mean that I will always have high lipase with subsequent bf’ing relationships?
Amy Cox
I had the lipase issue and I did indeed have it for all 3 of my babies. You can definitely do the scald trick.
Rebekah from Simply Rebekah
Kristen, there hasn’t been enough research done to give you a definitive answer, but it does seem most likely that when a mother has this with one baby she will also have it with the next. That was my personal experience also.
I would highly recommend getting my book to set yourself up with success for your next child.
Kristen
Thank you, we aren’t pregnant yet, but have been ttc for a little over a year. Once money isn’t so tight (unexpected bills and flying home for a funeral have tapped our emergency funds right now) I will definitely look into purchasing it! Thanks!
Rebekah from Simply Rebekah
I am terribly sorry to hear about your recent loss. Best of luck to you as you are trying to conceive.
patty
Question: advice for a first time breast feeding mom, who had a tumor in her breast and had to have implants. The Dr and location nurse told her to pump, nurse and use formula, so she would be sure the baby was getting enough. She us discouraged because she is not pumping much.
Kristen
Patty, Things that helped me were eating galactologues (sp?) I ate steel cut oatmeal every morning, smoothies with flax seed etc. I ate lactation cookies and took more milk plus pills or tincture (the one with ghoats rue is better) drank a ton of water and a ton of coconut water and Gatorade. Almonds and Gatorade helped a ton, but my daughter reacted to the almonds so I had to stop that unfortunately…. Another thing I learned about after the fact was a SNS or supplemental nursing system…. If you do have to supplement with formula or donated milk it still helps baby get it at the breast instead of the bottle, and while you’re feeding them from the SNS at the breast it continues to stimulate your breasts to make more milk… Oh and kellymoms website was very helpful to me and I was sent to it by an LC.
Erin
I’m so sorry but I’m not really use. 🙁 I would advise her to look for donor milk in her area to help supplement.
Brittany
I had mastitis with my first, so bad that I had to have the abbessed. I had to supplement during recovery as I could only use my left breast. My right breast dried up completely until next baby. I cried when I had to supplement by after he was about six months old I found I had increased my supply with just the one side that I was able to stop supplementing. My advice would be to do what you can and don’t beat yourself up about what you can’t. Your baby will be fine, EBF, supplementing with formula or exclusively formula fed.
Anne
My sister had a similar issue only it wasn’t her, it was her breast milk bags she was storing her milk in. Apparently some bags can have a chemical reaction to some breast milk. Now she freezes all her milk in glass jars.
Erin
That is so interesting!
marlene
what worked for us was: place a sweater or another item of your clothing in between the person & baby before feeding. it smells like Mom & baby will drink the breast milk from a bottle. :))
Erin
Awesome tip! Thanks!
Jennifer Dickson
I can only feed on one side because milk out of the other side tastes bad as soon as it comes out. I am unable to pump and scald as you suggested. After three kids breastfeeding, none of them will drink on the “bad side.” So for the sake of my kids, I’ve been lopsided for nearly five years now!!
Sarah
Thank you for your book. I just learned of my vomit milk issue. I have a freezer full of milk. It is very emotional. I don’t know how pump at work. My son has feeding issues as well. I feel alone lactation is no help.
Tom Anderson
Apparently all types of milk can develop a “metallic” taste when frozen and then thawed, not just breast milk. For the nursing infant, so sensitive to smells and tastes, this deviation from what the infant instinctively expects can lead to a lot more than disappointment on the part of both mother and child. Babies are quite good at communicating their needs — we don’t always listen closely enough.