To find this unhygienic?

[TeenyTinyToria]

Recently, I've seen a number of mothers go into public toilets, fill up a baby's bottle with hot water from the sink, add milk powder, and feed the baby. AIB totally U to find this disgusting and unhygienic, and think there must surely be a better alternative?

But, but but...

Che, lets say we have a bottle wich has been made hours x beforehand

In one of the methods described above (ie not 70c< water)

Which means there could be bugs in the milk. And the it gets heated. Just so. Warm enough for baby. And warm enouugh for ,billions of bugs to breed

(not attributing any of the above make up wayss to you Che btw!)

chellesgirl those links are pointing to info that is out of date
see here is mumsnet guide to formula feeding
What you did last year/5 years/10 years ago is now not recommended. If you did it and no harm came to your baby then that's fine, but the recommendations have changed... end of

Do nurseries make up fresh bottles for each child, then?

The nursery fridge at my daughter's place is always full of made up bottles with names on. We didn't use formula (I sent EBM) so now I'm curious about whether this is usual.

hours before hand - not made with boiled water 70'C or above, bugs in it not dead, YES billions of micro-organsims ready to feed off baby's gut... Oh so wrong, which is why a parent should make feeds as above - not like the 'mother' who fed her baby tap water.

If your going to use formula, use it correctly or Breastfeed. Simple.

The official guidelines for making up bottles of formula have changed recently (find them here), so whatever your mum/sister/best friend did may no longer be considered safe, however much they insist it never did their babies any harm.

the link doesnt work - page not found.

Yeah, but, the recommendations are a bit 'Oooh, and don't forget it MIGHT rain hammers!' It's not like someone in the formula factory takes a shit in every tin.

solid - i wouldnt put it past them

the bugs are : Salmonella and Enterobacter sakazakii - of which in a 300g tub are hardly existant - but are still there an can cause gastroenteritis and food poisening.

Im a total BF supporter!!!!!! was just practically forced to feed a very poorly dd soya formula.

yuk,thats gross!!

CG: I am totally in favour of BF as well but couldn't manage it so FF DS. And don't recommend wiping one's bum on bottle teats at all... (well it's natural)

My first small tin of formula lasted four months bet there will be some shock at that, BTW my first PG resulted in twins that I BF for a year

which bit lily the bit where a mum fed her baby warm tap water, or the bit where formula is not sterile???

chellesgirl you are right the link doesn't work but don't understand why you are arguing.
The rules have changed...
here is a link to aptamil website stating formula should not be stored
The current advise is to make each feed as required.

what SGB??? bums and teats??? where did that come from lol.

4 months!!!!!! 4 months!!!!!!!! oh how ....outdated....that would saved alot of money these days..but sadly its 4 weeks tops now...thats prob why the last ES related illness in UK was 1958!

Ha ha I knew it!!

humpty am not arguing...recommendations are one thing, whether people choose to go by them is well thier choice - I personally have stored and heated formula, most of the time made up fresh feeds apart from night times...FSA have these guidlines that are yes from 2007. Formula advertising and labelling has become very strict since 2008. Formula companies have to be strict on what they say on thier tins as new mums who havent had advice (proper) are at risk of making thier baby ill.

I was just joking mumdm - though now I dont know whether to take you seriously was you making it ip???

Oh I wasn't making it up, I suppose I was lucky enough to only need the small tub untill they were 4 months old, many was the time that the MW told me she would not have been suprised to find I had succumed to putting them onto bottles. When my 2ins were in special care, (they were 6 weeks early) I even had a nurse plonk two bottles on the table, and she tried to tell me to go to sleep, she would deal with them!!! Those bottles ended up down the sink LOL.

TeenyTinyToria YANBU

Clearly it would not be sensible for an adult to drink tap water from the public toilets let alone a baby.

What is more worrying to me is the lack of understanding of what the guidelines for making up formula are:

why they are in place

and that there is an absolute best practice with the least amount of risk

and then some alternatives which carry
slightly higher risks.

This is my understanding of the situation:

First - dismiss all these anecdotal notions -I did it like this and my DCs are fine etc etc - that is irrelevant.

Second - dismiss any notion that this has anything to do with trying to make formula feeding seem harder/push breastfeeding.

Formula is not guaranteed sterile - see here

I know - fairly shocking isn't it.

It is not like for eg a yogurt, a pack of biscuits.

There is something inherent in the powdering process which means that sterility can't be guaranteed.

Formula powder has been found to contain life threatening bacteria.

This is why the best advice is to make up with water which has been boiled (to kill any bacteria in the water) and then cooled (cooled so that it does not denature the formula/also so that scalding risk is reduced/to minimise any problems with plastic in the bottle leaching out.

However the water needs to be at least 70 dec C to kill the bacteria. The formula should then be rapidly cooled and fed to baby.

Of course as Mums we all know that this is very difficult advice to follow.

So you need to be aware of the next best method - and this IS to store made up bottles in the fridge.

See this here. (Why it is aimed just at HCPs I do not know.)

For out and about you can use a flask of boiled water.

I don't know where this ridiculous notion of cooled boiled water and adding formula and heating has come from. You are unlikely to
be heating up to 70 degrees if you do this.

I don't think that the Mumsnet formula feeding page is very helpful. I think that it should contain more of the info in this leaflet.

I will let them know.

That Aptamil link is crap because it doesn't give the next best alternatives so people think - oh I can't do that it's too difficult - I know I will do what my friend did and use cooled boiled water and reheat or hot tap water

I don't think the anecdotal information is irrelevant, because many people will look at the guidelines and then ask their mum (other experienced mother) what they did, and may be more likely to follow their advice if it is simpler. What woudl be useful is to give people the facts on the risk so they can make an informed judgment. Otherwise I think many people will look at the advice, think it is an incredible faff, and then do whatever they like. Which may include really dumb things like using the hot water tap.

Personally if I had known that the risk was very very low I'm not sure I would have done anything differently (bottles pre made up and refrigerated with pretty much boiling water to the level that when freshly boiled water was added got the temperature right). When out and about either cartons or a bottle just with water and one of those pre measured things for the milk to be added. Obviously at the time that was thought to be fine. I'd wonder if there were a lot more babies that had significant bacterial infections ten years ago than now, because that was the standard with my friends too - although these weren't tiny babies.

Ok, prepared for you all to yell at me here, but anyway: I see that the current guidelines ask you to be very, very, very careful about tiny risks (which is fair enough, but probably arse-covering rather than sensible precaution).
But how do you sterilize a (human) nipple? Dip it in boiling water?

OUCH! I do mine in Milton ;)

That is truly disgusting to fill a bottle with the hot tap.

You wouldn't make a cup of tea for yourself from that tap would you?

Urgh.