Career Advice; Shipping Liquid Gold

Hello Dear Boobjuicers and Friends!

So, when you were in the career advice office of whatever school you most recently attended, getting advice on your resume and identifying possible future employers, remember how the counselor told you, "Now, young hopeful, be sure, when your organization merges with a large bank, to talk to your new c-level executives at the closing celebration about your cheeky breastfeeding blog. That will surely advance your career interests most effectively."

No? Huh. Well, this guy is either the most gracious person in the world or genuinely interested, because we had a lovely conversation about it, and he pointed out the presence of a neat breastfeeding calendar which I must acquire.

So on to more immediately practical topics. Shipping breastmilk. There are several sites out there explaining methods of doing it - kellymom.com and eats on feets, for starters. Most of these suggest using dry ice. I don't know about you but I am too busy (lazy?) to go find dry ice to ship milk around. I used a cold shipping storage box I found on Amazon (was made by RNC Industries - they recommend their 12x12x12 box) and bought extra cold packs. These are just those gel packs you freeze yourself and much like you find in a picnic cooler. I found the best packing method was two gel packs on the bottom, one on each side, and two on top. We put the frozen breastmilk (in the storage bags sold by Lansinoh in this case) by the half dozen or dozen into larger ZipLoc freezer bags (this is important in case one of them has a leak in it) and put the freezer bags into the box inside the frozen gel packs. If they don't fill up the storage space, put the top gel packs on top and then use bubble wrap or something to fill up the rest of the space inside the insulating liner of the box. Tape it up but good! I used FedEx Standard Overnight, that delivers at 10:30 in the morning and this worked like a charm. It's not cheap but this is liquid gold we're talking about here. Also check if you can use your employer's account and reimburse them - they might get a better deal. (Someone pointed this out to me after I did this three times. Ah well).

My sister in law shipped her stash this way for part and let UPS pack the other half, moving house from NY to MI. The friend on the other end who received the goods for her said the box she packed by my method was still frozen solid and the UPS box was thawed, but still refrigerator cold. I asked her to find out how UPS packed that box but no word back yet. So again, I'm not an IBCLC or a FedEx employee or anything fancy like that, so follow my advice at your own discretion. But it worked for us.

Hopefully that is useful to some of you! Let me know if you try it and how it works for you.

Much love,
Suzi