How do people ACTUALLY prepare formula??

[Tinaland]

Hi

I have had to start feeding my 3 week old formula. Just wondering how people ACTUALLY prepare it??

I know the instructions say make each bottle as needed with freshly boiled cooled water; do not store the boiled water or made up formula etc, but what do people do in the real world?

Do you store boiled water - in the fridge or not? Do you store made up feeds??

What about going out and about?

Thanks xxx

It was indeed - hence the 180 on the advice given from 'use mineral water straight from the bottle' to 'make sure you boil the mineral water!'.

I am so incensed by this crap from APTAMIL - not mentioning 70 degrees and different info on the packs in Roumania etc that I'm doing a live "CHAT" on the Aptamil website!

Will report back.

Just as an observation, and I really know shag all about preparing bottles, but...

Quite a few ladies I know are confused about what sterile means and think that sterile water will sterilise the powder.

This is not the case. Room temperature sterile water will not be sterile after non-sterile milk powder has been added.

No doubt everyone knows this already, so I apologise.

Ok this might be a dumb question , but how do you know its 70 degrees?

Just started DS formula for bedtime feed. Hes 6 months, it seems to take forever to get it ready. I'm really crap at timming, and am often frantically cooling with a tired whingy baby!
Any tips on quick cooling (the running tap method seems very wasteful!)

mrsgordonfreeman - I think that it's good to know what the "myths" are. It really is shocking that there is no proper guidance given to parents on formula feeding.

TBH if it was done properly, I personally think that the rate of BF initiation would increase.

houmousandcarrotsandwich that is a very good question and one that was answered by a recent FSA press release. They concluded that you should boil at least 1 litre of water and let that cool for 30mins. (Otherwise you'd need to do experiments). We used to use a timer to beep to remind us.

I believe that the packs say you can make up and leave for up to 2 hours before feeding - so you can prepare a little in advance that way.

It is quite surprising. However, in my experience there wasn't much breastfeeding advice provided either - you seem to have to seek it out yourself regardless of how you end up feeding the baby.

I agree that if the guidelines were clearer ff would stop seeming like the "easy" option!

I've only really read the back of one tin and the writing was really small, printed in pale green on white and the instructions confusing (SMA Wysoy) - is that the case generally?

Oh my god! i had no idea that the formula should be added at 70cto kill bacteria!

I've used Hipp, Cow and Gate and SMA, and the instrucions always say boil kettle, leave to cool for 30 mins, add powder etc. but I thought the 30mins was a minimum not max.

Ive always filled the bottles with the correct amount of water, then left them with their lids on until needed, and then added the powder. Had no idea this was wrong. The packet really should make it clear that the water needs to be 70c to kill bacteria, otherwise how are you supposed to know??

For DS2 I always filled a day's worth of sterilised bottles with just bolied water, left them to cool to room temperature and then added the formula when ready to use. That seemed to be the accepted method at the time.

How common is it for babies to be seriously ill from incorrectly made formula? (where there is a good quality water supply and generally decent hygiene standards) I have never heard of one.

I don't know how common it is lisbey but they are not dice I would choose to roll if it was as simple as making up the bottles in a certain (if inconvenient) way.

grapes I assume the reason the formula companies have not written this stuff in large letters is because they don't have to and they don't want to admit their product is in anyway dangerous, because it would affect sales.

oh dear morloth - evil formula companies, zzzzzzzzzz

So why isn't it in big letters then Lola?

I boil the kettle and leave it from 5 - 30 mins depending on the time i've got, then make up the bottle, stick it in the small side sink with cold water and then dump in a lot of ice (our fridge has an ice maker attached) to get it down to drinking temp. I throw away after an hour.

...because contrary to popular belief, most formula feeders can actually read and don't need jolly phonics style simple text to help them understand. And because the boxes are not the size of a house.

I can't imagine any food company putting warnings about bacteria on the side of the product unless somebody made them.

I mean, 'use by' dates and details about keeping food in fridges, and about using within 24 hours of opening are all about bacteria - but it never says that.

Plus I don't imagine formula companies would mind sales of powder dropping - have you seen the price of ready made cartons?!

If the milk recipes are different between Romania and the UK and you can safely make up the milk at 40degrees in Romania as implied from tabouleh's chatlog. Why don't they make the UK formula the same as the Romanian one?

grapes didn't know and I have seen plenty of people on this forum being surprised by it.

It doesn't have to be in phonics style language, couldn't it just be set out clearly in the directions part?

Perhaps they didn't read the box properly?

This is pretty important info I would think, it should be in type large enough so that a glance will make it noticeable.

Well, I think I should be able to buy stage 1 formula without discount / promotion restrictions. Such is life.

lisbey "How common is it for babies to be seriously ill from incorrectly made formula? (where there is a good quality water supply and generally decent hygiene standards) I have never heard of one."

• well look up the thread to frakkit's post which was "a baby at church got very, very sick from enterobacter sakazaki which is found in formula so it really does happen and it's serious."

The think is - this particular problem has NOTHING to do with either the water supply or hygiene standards during preparation. It is to do mainly with Enterobacter sakazakki.

From the WHO guidelines

Powdered infant formula (PIF) has been associated with serious illness and death in infants due to infections with Enterobacter sakazakii.

During production, PIF can become contaminated with harmful bacteria, such as
Enterobacter sakazakii and Salmonella enterica. This is because, using current manufacturing technology, it is not feasible to produce sterile PIF.

During the preparation of PIF, inappropriate handling practices can exacerbate
the problem.

Recognizing the need to address such hazards in PIF, Codex Alimentarius decided to revise the Recommended International Code of Hygienic Practice for Foods for Infants and Children.

In doing so it requested specific scientific advice from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health
Organization (WHO). FAO and WHO have provided this advice in the reports of two expert meetings held in 2004 and 2006 on Enterobacter sakazakii and other microorganisms in powdered infant formula (PIF). Part of this advice included recommendation to develop guidelines for the preparation of PIF.

The World Health Assembly (WHA) of WHO requested in 2005 the Organization to develop such guidelines on the safe preparation, handling and storage of PIF in order to minimize the risk to infants.

The FAO/WHO advice on E. sakazakii in PIF includes a quantitative microbiological risk assessment of E. sakazakii
in PIF.

One of the aspects of the risk assessment was to determine relative risk reduction associated with different preparation, storage and handling scenarios.

The recommendations made in the present guideline document are largely based on the findings of the quantitative risk assessment. No risk assessment was carried
out for Salmonella, but the group reported that the basic risk control principles for E. sakazakii would also hold true for S. enterica.

In general, sterile liquid infant formula is recommended for infants at the highest risk of infection. Where sterile liquid infant formula is not available, preparation of PIF with water at a temperature of no less than 70 °C dramatically reduces the risk. Minimizing the time from preparation to consumption also reduces the risk, as
does storage of prepared feed at temperatures no higher than 5 °C.

If you want to see an upsetting film about this see here .

grapesandmoregrapes "The packet really should make it clear that the water needs to be 70c to kill bacteria, otherwise how are you supposed to know??" - Quite!

That is what I was trying to ascertain from my webchat.

Morloth - I think that actually there is no difference between the UK and the Roumanian formula but in the UK they have to follow the UK guidelines.

LolaKnickers - what's the problem here for you? Genuinely interested. I had to FF (won't go into the reasons here). Why the ?

I am massively grateful that there is formula available for people like me. But bloody hell those formula companies are unethical - I do not think they should be able to "promote" formula and wriggle and not make the instructions 100% clear.
We have at least more info here/better hygiene and access to health care - but when formula companies are marketing like this in other countries then I do feel sad.

For me the main thing is that newborns, especially premature babies and older babies who are immune compromised should ALWAYS have ready to feed.

In the US(who don't have any proper guideines ) - there is concentrated liquid formula which is sterile and to which water is added.

Why this is not available in this country I don't know.

LolaKnickers - the problem is that it isn't written on the box, not that it isn't written in giant primary colours so you can't miss it!! Which fromula do you use that says that the powder needs to be added to hot water in order to kill bacteria??