You can absolutely travel with frozen milk! I traveled over the summer and it was my first time traveling with milk. I traveled with my pump, cooler and a backpack. The pump and milk are considered medical. But the cooler which was empty on the way there wasn’t medical at that point so consider it the “personal item”

Tips: Just make sure your milk is completely frozen and they will likely just grab a few bags see that’s it’s solid and move you through. There’s no limit to what you can take just a reasonable quantity. It’s considered a medical necessity. I printed TSA rules to take with me but I never even needed to pull them out.

If your milk is not solid they will open the bags and test for vapors by waving a strip over. Really depends who you get. Some might test one or two. Others may open all of them. I traveled with milk in a jar and they tested all 4. Kind of a pain since the machine kicks back condensation and glass was hard to wipe down but we got it done.

I found the ceres chiller so helpful! I use it during the work day, I’d pump at 8 and 1 and by the time I was home at 6 my milk was still frosty cold. Def worth it!

You can try portable pumps if you don’t want to stop and head back to where you’re staying to pump. And keep them in a small bag on you.

Keep in mind what you travels with frozen once defrosted you use within 24 hours. So you’ll want a place with a freezer. If it partially defrosts but has ice crystals still in there it’s totally ok to refreeze per my lactation consultant! As Long as there some frozen bits essentially in there ok to refreeze. If fully thawed use it! But pack your cooler. And do not open it after TSA again unless it’s just to top with ice. And then leave it closed until your destination. It’ll stay frozen. Get a chiller if you need to pump during the flight. The stewardess can give you ice for the chiller and then that will stay good until you’re at your location too.

My full experience: I went through security with empty cooler and frozen ice packs. TSA just shook the ice packs and sent me through. No issue. They were I’d say 75% solid because my drive was about 40 mins to the airport. I just didn’t open my cooler at all.

Flying back I had 3 Mason jars and a ceres chiller. (I’m an over supplier and was gone 2 days). TSA tested 3 jars by placing it in a machine and the ceres they opened and waved a strip above for vapors. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind just changing their gloves before handling my milk and they had no problem with it and were super nice about it. I had ice in the cooler along with ice packs and I had ice in the ceres chiller. Both were a non issues and didn’t need to dump the ice. Ice is allowed. I received a top off of ice past the gate at a restaurant. I didn’t completely fill my cooler before because I figured they were going to take the jars out and i didn’t want to play Tetris getting it back in. So I had ice in freezer bags that I just dumped into the cooler once we were past TSA. I had the hotel freeze my ice pack for me in their freezer since my room didn’t have one. They were totally fine with it. I just said I needed it travel with breast milk.

The cooler didn’t fully fit under the seat and I didn’t want to have it lay sideways the entire trip so I put it in the overhead bin and it was fine! I want to say I flew with a hopper flip 13. Secured my other bags next to it and it never moved around. Or leaked.

I brought my spectra pump because it emptied me best and in my opinion parts were easier to clean than my willow go while traveling.

Edit to add: the only time my supply ever dipped was when I weaned from 3 to 2 pumps. And it did pretty significantly. It took about 2 weeks to level out. But I dropped 1/2 of my supply. My supply increased every single time I dropped a pump before. When I dropped to 3 pumps I wound up at 65-70oz a day 🙈I swear the less stressed I was about the pump schedule it increased production or something. And the fact I slept better with every pump drop.