Pumping and Traveling

Last week I went on my first work trip since the baby's been born.  Originally, I was planning on just pumping and dumping but a co-worker gave me some great tips on how I can save my milk.  So, I thought I would pass along some tips.

1.  Preparation is key.  Take a cooler, the kind you can fold, so you can pack into your suitcase when heading to your destination.  Take tons of ziplock bags (I'll explain why later).  Take hand sanitizer.  And of course take your pump, your bottles, an ice pack, and your milkbags.

2.  When you arrive at the hotel.  If you can book a room with a kitchenette that has a fridge with a freezer is best.  You can also ask for a mini fridge but those don't always have freezers and depending on how much milk you need to freeze may not be big enough.  I was supposed to get a suite with a kitchenette but they put me in a regular room.  So, I told them I needed to freeze my milk and they let me use the hotel freezer.

3.  Here's where the ziplock bags come in handy.  I placed 2-3 milkbags into a sandwich ziplock bag then put the sandwich bag into a gallon ziplock.  I labeled everything and then placed a piece of paper into the gallon bag with my information (you know just in case my milk gets lost somehow).

4.  Sanitize your bottles.  Again, if you are in a room with a kitchenette you can sanitize your bottles on the stove or using the microwave but if you're in a regular hotel room then usually the hot water doesn't get hot enough.  So I used the coffee maker to boil my water and poured it over my bottles and pump pieces.

5. Coming home.  I placed my frozen bags into the cooler I packed with me and carried it through security.  I placed them in the cooler at 8am and got home at 4pm and they were still frozen.