Human milk

(picture: A day's congress attendees' harvest; Ede, NL, 2010)

Today my planned topic was on handling human milk: in what container, how and how long to store; how to thaw, warm and mix; do’s and don’ts, but I just can’t find any research on it. Lots of studies on details (just re-read the Newsflashes under the tags bacterial contamination, flash heating, pasteurization), but not the overall questions. Still, many rules are shared on the storage and handling of expressed and pumped milk: do not ever shake human milk (I really would like to know what has been observed under controlled laboratory circumstances with shaken milk!); place human milk at a certain place in the fridge or freezer for fear of temperature changes (now, really, folks, how are the odds of rising the temperature of cold milk in a container up to dangerous temperatures for bacteria growth by opening the fridge door?); never mix fresh milk with milk already stored (or not until they have the same temperature); never heat human milk up to body temperature twice; don't use human milk after deep-freezing for 4 or 6 months; finish or throw away within an hour of the start of a feed. All these are rules that make human milk feeding difficult. For mothers who do not easily pump, throwing away their milk is hard. And if there was a bit of evidence that these rules really are true hazards, OK, but I can’t find it. Someone?