About prep time for powdered formula?

[MissMalteser]

Ds is 6 weeks and I am just starting to introduce the odd bottle of formula so we can combination feed, at the minute I am using the pre made bottles but i have been looking into powder and because of the gap between dc's I'm not sure if ive just forgot it was always this complicated?
So each bottle has to be made fresh as required, this includes boiling kettle, making bottle and letting cool, but each bottle also has to be sterilised, once I open my steriliser to get a bottle out the rest are contaminated and need resterilised, so by the time ds starts grunting for a feed and I actually go through the faff of sterilising bottle, boiling water, making bottle and letting it cool enough to drink it could surely take at least 45 minutes each time? Am i missing something? and aibu to think surely there is a more time effective way to do it?

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

Okay, so there was only 1 reported child death from gastroenteritis in 2010 in the UK, but how many children had mild illness? How many children had moderate illness? How many children had illness with complications?
Even if the risk is very minuscule why would any caring parent take that risk when it can be easily avoided?

I had my first child 15 years ago when the advice was different but now I have a new baby I would follow current guidelines if I wasn't breastfeeding because the current guidelines make sense and were introduced for a reason.

I can't quite believe that some people think you don't need to sterilise bottles if you use a dishwasher. A dishwasher is not an adequate substitute for proper sterilisation. I just hope the people using dishwashers in place of proper sterilisation are not the same people who put toilet brushes and pet feeding bowls in the dishwashers.

[toomuchtooold]

Snap Katharina! I file it with the 48h exclusion from nursery for D&V and balance bikes under "shit that the one culture finds essential and the other hasn't even heard of".

[TheCatsMeow]

I can't quite believe that some people think you don't need to sterilise bottles if you use a dishwasher.

I didn't do this but if your dishwasher goes to 70 degrees, it will kill most harmful bacteria if I remember correctly. Very few women in America use sterilisers.

[waterrat]

'boobs are not sterile' wtf.

Breast milk contains antibodies that fight infection. IN research breastmilk actually attacked and destroyed E coli.

thetruthaboutbreastfeeding.com/2009/05/21/the-antibacterial-properties-of-breast-milk/


quote from the above site.

"The immunological components of breast milk help to protect both a mother’s breast and her baby from infection during feeding, as well as aiding the development of the baby’s immune system2. They also have another useful consequence, however: protecting breast milk from disease for some time after it has been expressed, enabling it to be stored.

Milk was collected from 9 mothers and divided into three samples: the first was analyzed the same day; the second was refrigerated (at 4 to 6 degrees C) for 48 hours; and the third was refrigerated for 72 hours. Each sample was then contaminated with an E.coli solution (the kind of nasty bacteria that dwells in toilets) and left for two hours. When the samples were tested, levels of E.coli had reduced by 80% in both the milk that was fresh and the milk that was 48 hours old. Levels had also diminished in the 3 day-old milk, but only by around 10%, indicating that the antibacterial properties, whilst still present, had started to degrade by this point."

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Also, waterrat if a mother and child are exposed to a disease, BM has antibodies in it so the child has more protection. BM adjusts temperature based on the temp of the child.

There is this weird line where people get upset if you talk about the frankly cool and awesome shit BM can do. People don't want make people feel guilty about not BFing so they avoid talking about it. But breasts are really cool. They do some amazing shit.

[VagueIdeas]

That's great and all that, but totally irrelevant to the OP's question about safe formula feeding.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Sorry Thread Officer VagueIdeas it won't happen again.

[VagueIdeas]

All I'm saying is, what's the point of posting lengthy copied and pasted paragraphs on the magical properties of breastmilk, when it's irrelevant?

[TheCatsMeow]

In discussions, the conversation naturally flows, and two posters were talking about why breasts didn't need to be sterilised as someone earlier had posted a comparison.

What is wrong with that?

[VagueIdeas]

The comment about breasts not needing to be sterilised could have been answered quite simply, without going into the magical properties of breastmilk.

It's just so predictable that any thread discussing formula goes off on a tangent like that. And I'm not complaining because I feel guilty about not breastfeeding my children but because it's irrelevant.

[toomuchtooold]

I always think the key with these decisions is to try and compare the level of risk with other activities that you do, and adjust behaviour accordingly. So this is a totally back of fag packet calculation, but: chances of dying in a car accident are 1 in 20,000, apparently. If one baby a year in the UK dies from an infection picked up from formula as was quoted upthread, and there's about 700k babies born a year in England and Wales - 1 in 20,000 is about 35 times worse than 1 in 700k. So if I want to reduce my baby's chances of dying in their first year, maybe I will choose to walk everywhere and make up my baby bottles in advance. Or more realistically for me, if I'm not going to worry about car accidents I'm definitely not going to worry about pre made up formula. And for me personally it was very important to be able to make this judgement because I had twins and that was 16 bottles a day for the first 3 months, and the reality of making two small early babies wait up to half an hour for their bottles to be prepped every 2-3 hours day and night, would have driven me and them very quickly round the bend.

[ithinkitstimeforanamechange]

This question has caused me many tears (and pnd) the last 6 months.

Breastfed first 5 children to toddlerhood dc6 until 6 weeks when I was put in hospital with pnemonia and wasn't well enough to feed for weeks. By the time I was I had about a single drop of milk in each boob

Initially I followed all the advice faithfully which ended up with me having a nervous breakdown on the kitchen floor at 2 am . (Could not afford constant cartons)


Got a perfect. Prep machine i know that they are not recommended by some places but my dd was in hospital with chest infections and I talked to he consultant there about it and her advice was that it was 100 % preferable to making up bottles ahead of me having a nervous breakdown and ending up hospitalized (which I nearly was).

I sterilise bottles and buy new every 4 weeks

She has never had an upset tummy but has had two chest infections - although she got the first of these when she was exclusively breastfed so can't really blame the perfect prep machine!

[Baconyum]

The cartons were new and prohibitively expensive when I had dd almost 16 yrs ago. Going by posts since mine maybe I 'got away with' making up 24 hrs in advance (probably a little less), is because the bottles were just out the steriliser and the formula made up with just boiled water. As I said I never had a problem related to the prep of formula (took us some trial and error till I found one she could tolerate and not throw up though).

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

mrsterry I too find the protective properties of breastmilk fascinating. Have you seen the comparison of mothers milk when her baby is well vs when her baby has an illness /virus. The milk turns much darker, almost like colustrum when the baby is unwell because the milk becomes packed with antibodies and bloody good stuff to help baby get better.

I'm going to wait for my telling off about mentioning breastfeeding now

I am not against formula feeding, my middle child was formula fed and the eldest combine fed but now I am ebf my youngest and I have I say it is much less faff (for me) to just clip my bra open and feed baby than to be sterilising stuff and mixing formula and trying to cool a bottle whilst baby waits crying. But I am rather lazy.

[Bishybishybarnabee]

I combi fed and used the Mam bottles, would sterilise the day's bottles in the microwave in the morning then put them together and keep them in the fridge. I made the bottles up as and when I needed them and cooled them down. I didn't really find the time taken to cool them down an issue, 5 mins under a running tap or 10/15 mins in a jug of cold water in the fridge. DS was reasonably predictable with feeds so I just started to make them a little while before I thought he'd want it. I did use the instant stuff overnight though.

[TheCatsMeow]

The milk turns much darker, almost like colustrum when the baby is unwell because the milk becomes packed with antibodies and bloody good stuff to help baby get better.

I've never heard this, how does it know?

[MrsTerryPratchett]

I've never heard this, how does it know? There's a feedback loop. Baby creates a vacuum and some baby spit goes in and 'tells' the breast what to do.

Since the OP isn't back, I vote I we talk about whatever we please.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

I've never heard this, how does it know?

I wondered that and watched a video about it. Apparently as the baby suckles droplets of his saliva pass through the nipple and the mums body responds to any bacteria / virus detected in the babies saliva and signals are sent to mums body to produce extra antibodies in the milk. It's a bit more scientific than that but that is basically how it works. It doesn't happen with mums who exclusively pump because no saliva gets into the Breast.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

Cross post but Mrs pratchett explained it better than me.

[TheCatsMeow]

Terry and loo thanks, that is really cool. I didn't know that at all. It makes me wish it had worked for us as my baby is always picking things up.

[Trickytricky]

The bottles will remain sterile if once the steriliser has finished you take the bottles out and put them together. Eg you make up the bottle, put teet on and the lid and seal them so no bacteria can get in. That way all the bottles are sterile and can be used as required. Don't leave them in the steriliser in pieces!!

[ithinkitstimeforanamechange]

How long do the benefits to immunity last? So I breastfed my dd for 6 weeks would she have any benefit now from that at 6 months?

[OptimisticSix]

What middleclassmumsnetter said, boil water, store in fridge. Make up each bottle with halg newly boiled water and powder then add Fridge water to cool.

[DoJo]

Ooh - I wonder if that's what they did with mine? I donated breastmilk for a study when my oldest was little, but have no idea what they did with it....!

[crayfish]

I don't understand why people are saying it takes 'up to half an hour' or having a breakdown at 2am because of the stress of making bottles. If you follow the approach I wrote out above then it takes less than 1 minute to make a safe bottle at the correct, drinkable temperature and all within the guidelines. I did it for months!

Making a safe bottle properly is less complicated than boiling an egg, and I bet most people can do that correctly.