DH and the breast milk saga

[MilkyBadBoy]

DD2 is 10 weeks old and EBF. Yesterday I left DH with her and DD1 who is two, for and hour whilst I popped out. DD2 had not long been fed but I left DH with a frozen pouch of breast milk just in case, and two deconstructed sterilised bottles in the steriliser.

After 25 mins I got a call to ask whether the condensation in the sterilised bottles had chemicals in that needed rinsing out before pouring the defrosted milk in and I explained that no, you don’t rinse sterilised bottles and you also touch as little as possible- certainly not the teat. (Remember, we covered this in NCT class with DD1’, ‘Yeh yeh yeh, ok.’)

DD1 disliked the bottle so DH didn’t get much practice first time around but not for lack of trying- at least 20 or 30 occasions of him having to prepare the bottle of breast milk from frozen whilst I popped out.

When I got back, DD2 was asleep but the bottle was still full, on the side and DH explained that she’d fallen back asleep before he’d had a chance to offer it to her anyway. Ok, not a problem. But, he said, DD1 had touched the teat, so it wasn’t sterile any longer. I looked over and saw there was no lid on the bottle, he’d just left it out in the open. He said he didn’t use lids. I explained that you have to use the lid to keep it sterile and obviously curious DD1 would touch it otherwise if she saw it on the table. ‘Yeh yeh yeh, ok’.

So we go together to the steriliser and I walk him through putting the other bottle together, transferring the milk, not touching the teat and putting on the lid. Fine.

In the meantime DD2 wakes up so he had a chance to try again, which he did. He promptly poured a full 80ml bottle all over himself and her because he hadn’t actually fully tightened the lid. Disaster, much swearing. Then he says ‘wow it’s hot’. Didn’t you test the temp rather on your wrist?’ ‘Huh? No.’

!!!!!!

Luckily not scalding but I was pretty annoyed by this point. Full outfit chance for both required, with him asking ‘where do we keep her clothes?’ (Erm, where we have kept them for the last ten weeks, right by the changing mat, which we use about ten times a day?!)

I calm down, go into the kitchen to clear up the absolute disaster zone that has developed in the whole hour I’ve been out of the house. I pick up the empty milk pouch to throw it in the bin (just discarded on the side). It hasn’t been cut. He’s just reopened the seal and poured the milk out over the unsterilised opening, straight into the bottle.

Thankfully none of the milk ended up being drunk in the end, but I can count 5 unacceptable ‘no no’s here.

YANBU= Weaponised incompetence at its finest
YABU= Mea culpa, I should have delivered a full detailed walk through and left an instructional video before I attempted to leave the house

(PS, no I won’t be LTB, so please save your breath)

As others have said, you don't sterilise your nipples and breasts before a feed (in fact, I bet you don't give them a wash immediately before and after a feed either).

yes, he made mistakes but mistakes happen when you don't do something all the time. It's second nature to you.

The mess and not knowing where her clothes are are both bloody stupid though!

'Colossally fucked up' 😳

Now that's an OTT response.

When I read about cutting the expressed milk bag, I was worried I'd been doing something horrendously wrong all these months! Even went and checked the box/instructions. I've just been reopening the bag. These comments have reassured me. Saying that, DS spends most of his time trying to eat the tv remote so I've got bigger things to worry about.

As others have said OP, you're all tired, you've got to leave him to crack on and find his own ways.

YANBU= Weaponised incompetence at its finest.

Surely nobody is that thick? He's internalised that it's your job.

So if you're not going to LTB, tell him he better shape up. Quick smart.

I’m grateful for the responses- perhaps I am a little OTT but genuinely assumed you did have to sterilise everything. I would still point towards the breast pump instructions to sterilise once washed and the milk storage bags which have ‘Sterile! Sterile!’ emblazoned all over them, so hopefully I can be forgiven. DD1 was v small and prem so I’m just following the instructions I received with her. Maybe mistakenly.

As an aside, yes we’re exhausted (although because I EBF it’s me up in the night, not DH, but we both agreed to this since he’s working FT and I’m on maternity leave).

I will apologise to DH and admit my faults here.

BTW- the username was supposed to be a nod to a parenting podcast rather than a patronising slate on DH but perhaps I missed the mark…!

You're being too precious. Hot soapy water is fine for bottles with breast milk.
Formula bottles need to be sterilised being formula is not sterile.

'Weaponised incompetence' is the new 'LTB' or 'cancel the cheque' on MN.

It's so silly. There are some contexts where it applies - mostly, like here, it's just incompetence.

Annoying, sure. Worthy of a row, yes. But the drama & LTB reactions are ridiculous.

When i had my eldest my nan helpfully told me the advice in her day was to always ''wipe your breasts with a flannel'' before breast feeding.

I thanked her and totally ignored the advice obvs, but the idea of this 'breast flannel' hanging about round the house has always given me the heebie jeebies. My dad survived the 'breast flannel' and got past childhood of course so ... ?

😂

Chill out a bit OP

I had no idea that you didn't need to sterilise bottles for bm!

I think it would be annoying having left everything ready to use to then get a call about what to do!

Is this the first time he has had to deal with a sterilised bottle?

Also not knowing where clothes are & leaving a mess-not on at all!

"Weaponised" incompetence is taking it a bit far imo. It sounds like common-or-garden regular incompetence to me 😬

You were a bit OTT on the lid.

I don't really understand the cutting thing. Isn't it more likely that your scissors will have bacteria on them than a bit of plastic that has previously been frozen?

The temperature thing is most worrying.

Did you not read the bit where OP explained he had done it several times before? In the circumstances the second sentence is quite ironic.

I'd go with weaponised incompetence if I was feeling evil, but at ten weeks and with a toddler too, he's probably fairly overwhelmed and tired too. NOT AS MUCH AS YOU ARE, obviously and by the sounds of it! I did all the feeding (breastfed) for my second child and DH pretty much cared for our first while I was on FT babycare (while he was at home, anyway) and he was exhausted, nearly as bad as I was.

But this is fairly gold standard incompetence and I'd be pissed off with him too.

Re. breastmilk though, don't over-worry about the sterilisation. BM is sterile and antibacterial, it can sit around a good while, you don't need to heat it above blood heat and only if you prefer (don't heat it really hot, I think you're killing off goodies), and honestly I wouldn't be fussing about pouring the milk over the 'unsterilised seal' of the bag. Do you also sterilise the outside of the bag and the scissors to cut the corner? Just don't worry, it's breastmilk and it's quite hard to break that.

How do you even put a bottle together without touching the teat? I used to push the soft teat bit through the hard plastic part, then just grab the end of the teat and yank it into place..

All that wasted breast milk! My pumping was a disaster. Weeks of pumping then wouldn’t take bottle and my poor DM feeding her with a syringe.

I don't really understand the cutting thing. Isn't it more likely that your scissors will have bacteria on them than a bit of plastic that has previously been frozen?

Well exactly. You'd have to have sterile scissors. This is how it's easy to go down a hellish rabbit hole of worrying about germs.

The home isn't a hospital environment and it's not healthy for anyone to try to re-create it as one. You have to use common sense of course, but as long as a baby is healthy and full term, exposure to some germs is fine and normal.

He's perhaps utterly petrified of not being able to do right for doing wrong. Perhaps weaponised terror is a more apt descriptor here...

YABU for calling one spilled bottle a "disaster zone" lol you'd hate my house.

I wouldn't even have trued with exh, he couldn't manage cutting a small carton of ready made formula and pouring it into a bottle I'd assembled and feeding at room temperature! Mine refused bottles too to be fair though mum managed ti persuade them when I left them with her a couple of times a piece

I calm down, go into the kitchen to clear up the absolute disaster zone that has developed in the whole hour I’ve been out of the house

He should have done that. He needs to learn his own way in his own time. He’ll get there.

You are both being unreasonable so I can't vote

The Dear Sod, You are all sleep deprived,no doubt.
Make up a diagramatic chart for you all to refer to when you are in the thick of it. Just a small baby's cry is enough to fluster me.
Your husband will get better; it will all come back to him.

I am a firm believer of ‘if you want something done properly, do it yourself’ 😂

This!

How are you going to cope when they are crawling and putting everything in their mouths? Babies/children need to build immunity. Yes, you need to be careful but jeez you sound completely obsessed.

Oh OP, I remember these days and when they say breast milk is liquid gold they aren’t wrong. The time, energy and stress that goes into pumping only to have it be thrown away/dropped by someone else would have broken me!

But practice makes perfect. Keep giving him the opportunity to do it and he will get there - and if it is weaponised incompetence he will soon stop bothering because the more he ‘fails’ at it, the more he does it!