A Guide to Traveling with Breast Milk

If you’re going to take a trip while you’re exclusively pumping, you’re going to be traveling with breast milk! Below I’ve laid out everything you need to think about when traveling with breast milk, whether you’re driving or flying to your destination, and whether you’re traveling with frozen breast milk or fresh.

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Traveling With Breast Milk by Car

If you’re exclusively pumping, most of what you feed your baby will be the milk you pump on the trip, but it’s not a bad idea to bring a little extra milk as well, in case of a spill or other mishap. Here’s how to pack it.

How to pack and transport fresh breast milk

If you just want to bring a few extra bottles, you can pack it in a small breast milk cooler for travel. (Here are a few great options.)

Most breast milk coolers come with an ice pack. Make sure the ice pack is frozen solid when you leave, and make your milk the last thing you pack and the first thing you unpack.

If you need to bring a larger amount of milk, you can pack the breast milk with ice in a larger cooler for the trip – the kind of cooler you might fill with drinks at a BBQ will work.

If you’d like, you can monitor the temperature of your cooler using a thermometer like this one (it tells you whether the cooler is in the “refrigerator zone” or the “freezer zone”). Just remember that opening the cooler will increase the temperature inside it, so you don’t want to open it constantly.

Fresh breast milk can be stored in a cooler up to 24 hours – more info here.

How to travel with frozen breast milk

If you are traveling with frozen breast milk, you will also want to pack it in a cooler. Depending on the length of the trip, you may need dry ice.

A few tips for packing your frozen milk in a cooler without dry ice:

• Make sure the cooler is as full as possible. If you don’t have enough milk to fill the cooler and don’t want to use a ton of ice, consider freezing water in plastic zip-top bags and using that to ensure it’s full.
• Keep the freezer closed and refrain from opening it until you get to your destination. Opening it will increase the temperature.
• If you have a smaller/soft cooler, consider pre-chilling it before you leave.

As mentioned above, dry ice is an option for longer trips – here is an overview of how to pack a cooler with dry ice for trips.

Below is what this might look like – Iyana from our Facebook Group packed 4,000 ounces of milk in 150 quart coolers in dry ice for a 14 hour drive; it arrived frozen solid.

Hopefully, you won’t have any issues with your frozen milk thawing en route. However, if does thaw (meaning no ice crystals are present), it will need to be used with 24 hours or discarded.

Traveling with Breast Milk by Plane

One good thing about flying is that most airlines consider your breast pump a “medical device” and therefore don’t count it as a carry-on, so you can plan on packing your luggage as you normally would. (You may want to call ahead to confirm that this is the case for your airline.)

Packing fresh breast milk to carry on

For passengers flying in the U.S., while there is no defined limit to how much breast milk you can carry on, the TSA website references a “reasonable amount.”

Note: It’s a good idea to print out the TSA guidelines to bring with you, in case your screener is not familiar with how breast milk is screened. (For example, one mom was forced to pump in an airport bathroom, because her screener thought that empty bottles were not allowed.)

Leaving “reasonable amount” up to an individual TSA officer would make me nervous, so if you need to bring a substantial amount of breast milk with you on a trip, you may want to ship it ahead to your destination or check it.

The best way to pack breast milk for carry on is in a breast milk cooler. If you have a lot of breast milk, some coolers will hold up to six 8 oz bottles; if you fill these bottles to the top, you can fit about 60 oz of milk.

During the screening process, be sure to take your milk out when you take out your other liquids, laptop, etc., and make sure you tell the screener that you’re traveling with breast milk and that you have a pump. They will likely examine the milk by x-ray.

If you need ice to keep your milk cool (if it’s a long flight or you experience delays), in most cases you can get ice from the flight attendant or a restaurant inside the terminal.

Checking frozen milk

Checking your frozen milk is another option if you have a lot of frozen milk.

Becca from our Facebook group packed 276oz of breast milk and checked it in a Yeti cooler on a flight from Israel to the United States. It arrived frozen solid.

Here’s what it looked like:

Follow the same guidelines I mentioned above for packing frozen breast milk – pack the cooler full, don’t open it until you get home and are able to put it away (resist the urge to check on it!), and pre-chill it if possible.

Also, always make sure you check with your airline ahead of time, just to make sure there are no surprises at the airport.

Shipping frozen milk ahead to your destination

This is a great tutorial on how to ship breast milk with dry ice.

If you don’t want to deal with packing it yourself, Milk Stork will ship it for you.

Feeding Your Baby on the Trip

In most cases, it will be easiest to keep your most recently pumped breast milk out at room temperature, and then feed that to your baby.

Fresh milk can safely be kept out at room temperature for about 4 hours; this way, you don’t need to worry about warming breast milk for baby while traveling.

If you do want to use milk from your cooler and your baby prefers warm milk, you have a few options for warming it:

• You can ask a restaurant for hot water in a cup and put the bottle in it for a few minutes to warm – just make sure that when you go to put the bottle in, there’s enough room so the water doesn’t overflow onto your hand.
• You can use a portable bottle warmer
• Bring a thermos of hot water with you and warm your bottle in that.

More on warming bottles on the go here.

Pumping on the Trip

A few things to think about when it comes to pumping on your trip:

If your pump doesn’t have a rechargeable battery, you will need either a car adapter or battery pack for your pump. Make sure you get one that has the correct voltage for your pump – more on breast pump battery packs here. 

If you’ll need to pump more than once, you’ll need to think about cleaning your pump parts. You have a few options:

1. You can pack enough sets of clean pump parts and bottles to get you through your trip/one day of travel. Pack each set – flanges, valves, connectors, bottles, and caps – in a gallon-sized zip-top bag so you can just pull it out when you’re ready to pump.
2. You can wash them in between pumping sessions, on the way – just make sure you have a good plan for how to do that. Restrooms are obviously less than ideal for washing pump parts because of bacteria, but if you bring a collapsible wash basin, dish soap, bottle brush, and clean towels to pump your pump parts on after you wash them, it will be compliant with the CDC guidelines for washing pump parts. On a plane, you might want to ask the flight attendant for bottled water to wash your parts.
3. If neither of these will work, you can consider using Medela Quick-Clean wipes.

You can download a free breast pump bag packing checklist here.

If you are flying with your baby, here is a primer that I wrote up on the logistics of how to manage this.

Managing Your Milk At Your Destination

Pumping at a location where you don’t normally pump, without the comforts of your pumping station and setup for storing milk and washing pump parts is one of the more stressful things about figuring out how to travel with breast milk.

Here is what you need to think about, whether you’re staying at a hotel or in a home.

Storing your milk

Before you leave, you’ll want to ensure that there is a fridge that you can use at your destination. If you’re staying in a hotel, call and ask ahead of time if a mini-fridge can be provided for your room, and tell them that you need it to store breast milk – it may be provided at no charge as breast milk is sometimes considered a “medical liquid.”

If you need a freezer, you can ask at the front desk if you can use the hotel freezer. (Or call ahead and ask.) Make sure to seal your breast milk into a single container and label it.

If you’re staying as a guest in someone’s home, it might be a good idea to ask ahead of time to make sure there’s some space in their fridge or freezer that you can use.

Dealing with washing everything

In addition to fridge space, you’ll also need room to wash your pumping gear and bottles.

Ideally, there would be a kitchen counter and sink where you could do that, but in a hotel the bathroom will work. You’ll want to have a collapsible wash basin, dish soap, bottle brush and clean towels to put your pump parts on to dry.

Packing for the trip home

Finally, for the trip home, if you’re using an ice pack for the trip, you will want to be able to freeze it solid before you leave, both to keep your milk cold and to avoid extra inspection from the TSA if you’re flying.

If you’re in a hotel and the mini-fridge has small freezer compartment, that might work. Alternatively, you could ask for ice at a restaurant (obviously, after you go through security if you’re flying).

What other tricks do you use when you travel with breast milk? Feel free to add ideas below in the comments.

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