baby milk and vertical or horizontal refigerators

Ok, this does it, for the 3rd time now, I have had someone tell me that a doctor has told them, after the arrival of a newborn, to not store bottles of milk for your baby in a refigerator, unless it is the type where the freezer and refrigerator part are vertically oriented. Apparently the ones with the freezer on top are a no no. Now, if I were the father, I would surely inquire as the the logic of this, but I guess the excitement of birth has left this one without pursuit for 3 of my friends. Any ideas?

A refrigerator is a refrigerator is a refrigerator: It refrigerates. In the refrigerator part it will keep a temperature between 3 and 6 degrees celsius, so I can’t see any difference there.

Conceivably there might be a point to distinguishing them if you are using the freezer section as different refrigerators will keep very different temperatures in the freezer section. maybe saying “divided vertically” is a way of saying you can be sure the temperature in the freezer is lower as that type would be better quality…

This rule of thumb makes absolutely no sense at all. I cannot see how the refreigerator is going to affect the milk if it is arranged horizontally, vertically, as a dodecahedron, or with the freezer 3 dimensions over.

Well, that’s just silly.

Perhaps they got some confused information (from a newspaper article or something) about the long-term storage capabilities of various types of freezers?

From The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding:

“Milk can be kept refrigerated for eight days. For longer storage, it can be frozen. Frozen milk can be kept up to two weeks in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator, three to four months in a separate door freezer that is opened frequently. It can be kept six months or longer in a separate freezer that stays at a constant O degrees F (-19 degrees C).”

What robinh said. I can’t find any information at all in any of my pregnancy and childbirth about specific types of refrigerators for storage of baby milk.

It’s possible that this is old information, however. VERY old refrigerators might not have been as well insulated as modern fridges are, thereby causing food on the top shelf to be colder than food lower down. Not being that old, however, I don’t know for sure that this is true.

Whatever the case, it’s no longer true.

Robin

In the fridge I remember, the heat absorber coils had always a thick layer of ice on them, except when recently de-frosted.
The ice that mom scraped off (I learned many new words back then :)) smelled …funny.

Maybe they are afraid of cooties snowing or trinkling down onto the bottles?
You can never be too cautious, but if the limburger cheese sits right aside… :rolleyes:

Hmmm…this is just old lore but based on some truth from years ago.

In “the old days” the freezer temps would occassionally lower the overall temp of the fridge. My understanding is that this was an issue for vertical arrangements.

I guess the fear was that the milk would freeze (???)