• How to ensure EBM is safe in the hotel’s freezer?

Get a box from the hotel (since you store EBM in bakery freeze, there should be cake boxes available) or any plastic bag and ask the hotel staff to write your name, room number as well as “Breast milk inside – do not move” – all in their local language outside the box or on a piece of paper to attach on the plastic bag. Whenever you enter the freezer room, always inspect the condition of the box / plastic bag / EBM to make sure no one has touched it. Always insist to bring in/ add in the EBM by yourself, even if you have to be escorted by the hotel staff.

• How to sterilise the breast pump while travelling?

You only need to sterilise once or twice a day when you are in the hotel. Here’s how:
1. Sterilising tablet. You can use the sterilising tablet and soak the pump & accessories in the small cooler box.
2. Boiling. Ask the hotel for big electric kettle, big enough for you to put in the pump and boil it.
3. Anti-bacteria wipe. You can clean the pump with the anti-bacteria wipe from Medela, specially designed for cleaning the pump with no water and followed by soaking in hot water in the small cooler box.

• How to transport the EBM from foreign country back to home?

Before checking out, you’ll need to remove the frozen EBM from the freezer and wrap EBM individually with paper towel (or old newspaper / document paper). Then, line the large cooler box with ice bricks (available from Coleman which can be cut into shape / size of your cooler box). Line a thick cloth towel around the ice bricks, and put in the wrapped frozen EBM. Cover the EBM with another layer of thick towel and add more ice on top of the towel to fill in the space. The ice can be easily obtained from the hotel/restaurant.

Don’t put the chilled / fresh EBM together with the frozen EBM as this will thaw the frozen ones. You can put the small cooler box (with chilled / fresh EBM) inside the large one (with frozen EBM) so they are separated but you only have one cooler box to carry.

Try to negotiate to allow carrying the cooler box as your hand luggage. Usually they will allow upon knowing you have ice in the cooler box, as they don’t want to risk wetting / messing the other luggage. This way, you can remove the ice water and add more ice to the box while you are flying.