Shipping Step by Step
How to Ship Breast Milk
1. Call the family that is receiving your breast milk first so that they are prepared to be home to properly store it so it doesn’t sit on the doorstep for too long.
2. Purchase a cooler to ship the breast milk in. You can get reasonably priced thick styrofoam coolers with a minimum thickness of 2-3″, remember you are shipping this.
3. Purchase dry ice.
4. Wear gloves when dealing with dry ice. Read more about dry ice here. You will not need more than 8 pounds of dry ice for a cooler full of breast milk. Break up the ice and place half of it on the bottom of the cooler.
5. Layer newspaper on top of the dry ice.
6. Take your frozen breast milk and put them in zip lock bags, make them airtight and then wrap in newspaper. The zip lock bags are to save any milk that may leak during shipping and the newspaper is to prevent the bags from touching the dry ice as it will break open the bags. Put these into the cooler on top of the newspaper layers.
7. Layer more newspaper on top.
8. Place the remainder of your dry ice on top of the newspaper. If there is extra space in the cooler make sure to fill with more newspaper to prevent shifting.
9. After placing the lid on the cooler, do a good job of taping it all up. Do use proper shipping tape and Do leave some of the cooler not tapped so that the dry ice can vent.
10. Make sure to write “Human Milk” on your cooler.
11. When shipping, make sure that you send on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. If you ship Thursday or Friday it may sit an extra day since there’s no Sunday shipments.
12. Go to your local FedEx and ship the cooler to the recipient.
13. Call the recipient to inform them that you have shipped the breast milk, give them the tracking number and when they should expect it.
Paying for Shipping
Buyers can pay for shipping one of two ways. Either by being billed by the seller or giving the seller their shipping account number.
FedEx
FedEx has same day and next-day delivery options. They have a remarkable on-time delivery record. FedEx is confident of the reliability of their systems and people, and they back FedEx Express® shipments and FedEx Ground® shipments within the U.S. and to Canada with a money-back guarantee.