A mother has spoken of her frustration after losing a month’s supply of breast milk during last week’s power outages.

Jessica Camilleri Laferla, 29, said she cried when she came home to Malta from a family holiday to discover several litres of the frozen milk was spoiled.

“It is so much hard work,” she told Times of Malta: “Pumping takes the life out of you.”

She had been expressing milk for over two months to build a month's supply of frozen breast milk for her five-month-old daughter, Camilla in preparation for returning to work in October.

Her home in Msida was among the many across Malta and Gozo that were hit by lengthy power cuts, which Enemalta blamed on heat damage to high-voltage cables.

The first-time mother had been on holiday in Sicily at the time and, on Saturday, her father-in-law – who went to their Msida home to feed the cats – called and informed them that there had been a power cut.

All the items in the freezer were spoilt.

“There was a whole shelf of breast milk. I cried,” she said. “I don’t even know for sure when the power was out and for how long.”

Baby Camilla with her mother Jessica Camilleri Laferla

'We are in 2024 and I can’t rely on there being electricity'

She worries she will not be able to rebuild her supply, which is important because baby Camilla has begun refusing to drink from the breast.

“My flow has been decreasing and I only manage to freeze one feed every other day. And I have no guarantee that it will not happen again. We are in 2024 and I can’t rely on there being electricity,” she said.

She said she wanted to continue feeding her daughter breast milk because of the antibodies it contains and so had been expressing her milk for the last 10 weeks on her paediatrician's advice.

“That way my mind was at rest as I knew I had a month’s supply of milk and it eased the pressure,” she said.

Jessica said she could not bear to see the frozen milk thrown out. She took it to her mother’s house where it is stored in the freezer for other uses – such as milk baths to treat rashes or skin issues the baby might develop.

Helpful for mothers returning to work

Jessica’s frustration is backed up by the Breastfeeding Walk-in Clinic at Mater Dei Hospital, which says expressing milk is especially helpful for mothers returning to work but warns them it can be “quite a chore”.

“Some women find they need several weeks of practice to express milk easily,” it says.

In Malta, recommended storage times for breast milk are three days in a fridge and three months in a freezer.

Frozen breast milk should be used within 12 to 24 hours once removed from the freezer.

Over the past weeks, thousands of households and businesses fumed at the erratic power supply during the peak of summer. Some localities across the islands remained without electricity for more than 20 hours. 

Sales of generators have boomed as households feel they cannot trust the power supply, with some telling vendors they are purchasing them because they have newborn babies.