Your Milk: Preparing for Discharge

Preparing for your child’s discharge from the hospital includes planning how you will transport and store your pumped milk at home. To prevent the stress of having to make last-minute arrangements for bringing and storing your milk at home, we encourage you to begin this process now.

Instructions to prepare for discharge:

• Ask your baby’s nurse regularly how much milk you have stored at CHOP.

• If possible, send extra pumped milk home before discharge. This will reduce the volume to transport homeon the day of discharge.  

• Before discharge, make a plan for bringing your milk home. Decide how you will transport the milk:

  • Driving home with the milk

  • Flying on an airplane with the milk

  • Shipping the milk home

• Decide where you will store the milk when you arrive home:

  • Store milk in your freezer

  • Store extra milk with friends or family

  • Consider purchasing a stand-alone freezer

• Remind your nurse on the date of the baby’s discharge to provide you with all your refrigerated and frozen milk stored at CHOP.  

Instructions for transporting human milk:

• Transporting fresh human milk:

  • Put milk in a cooler bag with ice packs.

• Transporting frozen human milk less than 12 hours:

  • Frozen milk can be transported by car or plane outside of a freezer for up to 12 hours.  

  • Line the bins of milk with chux pads or baby blankets for additional insulation. Do not add ice to the bins.

  • If half of the bottles are frozen when you reach your destination, the bottles can be refrozen.

• Transporting frozen milk more than 12 hours:

  • Frozen milk may need to be transported with dry ice.

  • Frozen milk can be shipped on dry ice.

  • If you require assistance, please contact lactation at 267-426-5325 or email [email protected].

You may consider milk donation if you cannot take or use all your baby’s milk at home. The donation process takes time and must be started before your child’s day of discharge. Not all families are eligible to donate. Donation requires a minimum of 200 ounces. Please contact the CHOP Mother’s Milk Bank at 267-425-1662 or email [email protected] for more information.

Reviewed June 2024 by Lauren Davidheiser, MS, RDN, IBCLC, LDN and Meghan Devine, BSN, RN, IBCLC