Milk Tragedy

Today I forgot to bring along my hand phone. (Though it's not that I didn't use to). Sometimes I leave it on the dining table and most of the time under my pillow. Okay, that's not the point.

So when I reached home in the evening I found a few missed calls, and some text messages. One from DH, mak Yah, a contractor and one from Sheraz's caregiver. The last one frightened me a lot. Since the first day I returned to work, I've been a bit alert of any phone calls, because I'm afraid there might be any emergency call or whatsoever. Since it was only a text message so I thought there shouldn't be anything important. After all Sheraz was already with us.

When I read, I felt sad and hapless. Why? Because they texted that two bottles of Sheraz's milk (my expressed milk) have gone bad. They had thrown them away and wanted me to send over more. I remembered that this morning I gave five bottles of refrigerated milk, two of which contained frozen milk that had been thawed in the fridge. That was frozen milk and there's no way it can be spoiled! And once again I read the part: susu dah dibuang. Suddenly I felt so wretched. Do you know every drop of the milk is so precious? When I was experiencing breastfeeding hard time, I struggled even to get a single drop. When I checked Sheraz's bag I recalled that one bottle of the frozen milk contained 5.5 oz! and the other one was 4. So all together they have wasted 9.5 oz! All of a sudden I burst into tears because I knew the milk shouldn't been spoiled and that Sheraz could have been happier to get those. They could have mistakenly thought that it has spoiled because of the milk separation. Normally it may look spoiled but it's just separation where fat rises to the top.

Well, it was nobody's fault. They are not to blame. Seriously.

I thought they would have known more about handling human milk since there is one of the older babies at the nursery who also consumes only breast milk. (Or probably the mother never gave frozen one.) I should have briefed them though. It was just heartbreaking to have to think about them getting rid of that liquid gold! and I shouldn't have left the hand phone at home in the first place (eventhough by the time they texted me the milk had been discarded). It's all right, not our rezeki. The most important thing is that Sheraz had enough food today. It happened that they still got more of Sheraz's milk - even if I didn't come over to send extra.

Sheraz's lunch bag. Normally I prepare 5 cups / bottles every day.