Shelf Life-As a new mom, you may find yourself staring at a bottle of breast milk wondering whether or not to toss it. Take yourself out of the guessing game by keeping storage bags, labels, and a permanent marker near the fridge. Here are some guidelines.

Breast milk is safe:

• at room temperature in an air-tight container for up to 10 hours
• in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 8 days
• in a freezer (of a two-door refrigerator/ freezer) for 3 to 4 months
• in a freezer (single-door fridge with freezer section) for up to 2 weeks
•  in a deep freeze for 6 months or longer.

Containers-For the fridge, use hard sided plastic or glass containers with secure-fitting tops. For the freezer, use plastic freezer bags from brands such as First Years and Lansinoh, which are made for storing breast milk, or specially designed plastic ice-cube trays with covers including Slim Lines Milk Trays (sensiblelincs.com). Do not use disposable bottle liners to freeze breast milk.

Warming and Thawing-For obvious reasons, this task often fall to babysitters and dads. To cover your bases, type up a simple set of instructions and tape them to the fridge. The number one rule for thawing and warming is: Never put breast milk microwave. To prepare milk for baby, place it under warm, running water in its freezer bag or in the bottle. Never heat the milk to the boiling point. Gently swirl-do not shake-the milk after heating to evenly distribute the heat and to redistribute the cream into the milk. If milk has been frozen and thawed, it can be refrigerated for as long as 24 hours for later use, but it should not be refrozen.

Keeping Track-If you're pumping at work and freezing milk every day, print a blank calendar and tape it to your fridge. Have your baby's caregiver write down the number of ounces baby takes in every day. When you get home from work, write down the number of ounces you pumped and stored that day. To safeguard your stored supply, try to at least match or exceed what your baby is taking in.