How do you make and prepare your bottles for the night time feeds

[lucylev]

Hello

I've just stopped breast feeding and am now onto formula,

Just wondering if you have any top tips for getting the bottles ready for a feed during the night, I found myself faffing last night early morning trying to make a bottle up, i'd like to be able to stay in my bedroom and not have to come down to the kitchen

any advice would be great

thankyou

Um, unless you have a kitchenette in the bedroom, I think you will have to get downstairs!

Easiest way is to have bottles in the steriliser - then when baby wakes for a feed, put the bottle together and pour a carton of ready made formula in and heat it up in a warmer. This will take 2 mins!

Alternatively, in the evening, sterilise a bottle and boil the kettle. 25mins to 30 mins later, pour the boiled water into a sterilised bottle and stick it in the fridge (you can keep bottles for 24 hours this way). Then in the middle of the night you get the cold bottle, heat it in the warmer & then add powdered formula. If you're really wooly headed then count the scoops out loud so you don't get it wrong!

make the bottle up with hot water (70 degrees) before you go to bed. Cool it quickly in a tub of cold water and then straight into the back of (the coldest part) of the fridge. When needed zapp it in the microwave for between 15-30 seconds to bring it back to room temp and then give it a good shake to get rid of any hot spots.

Bottle is then ready to go.

easy peasy.

Scarabeetle the second method sounds like you are using cold water to dissolve the powder which will not kill the bacteria. As SugarPlum says you should make the bottle with hot water, then cool the milk quickly and refrigerate.

Not even sure how I ended up on this thread as I have never FF, but have read about this lots of times on here!

Scarabeetle - just so you are aware - formula powder is not sterile and should be made up with water which is 70 degrees C.

Cool water should not be used to make up formula. It is safer to make bottles in advance with 70 degree water.

lucylev - if you don't want to leave your bedroom then cartons are the way to go - but any unused in the carton would need to be disgarded if you didn't want to go down to the fridge.

Alternatively you could have a flask with water at 70 degrees and then pre measured amount of formula - but you have to cool the bottle down to drinking temperature.

NHS leaflet for HCPs

WHO guidelines

really good info from Ireland - click on guidance note 22

I used to take a flask of hot water to bed, a sterilised bottle or two and used the tommee tippee powder pots and measured it out first. I'd make bottle up then cool it down in the sink in bathroom or use a bowl of cold water. When dd went down to 1 night feed i thought sod this and took a sterilised bottle and a carton of ready feed up with me. my dd wasn't fussy and would just have it straight from the carton- no need for a warmer.

would it be possible to make up the bottle, refrigerate, take a flask of boiling water it up to bed in a cool bag and then heat up using a bottle warmer or a flask of boiling water?

would it be possible to make up the bottle, refrigerate, take a flask of boiling water it up to bed in a cool bag and then heat up using a bottle warmer or a flask of boiling water?

missdt do you mean take it out of the fridge and up to bed with you, and then warm it in hot water when you want to use it?

There is nothing stopping you doing that but i personally wouldn't. The aim in keeping the bottles in the fridge until you need them is to retard any bacterial regrowth. If you are taking the bottles out of the fridge and letting them sit at room temp for some time before you use them then you are potentially allowing any surviving bacteria to begin regrowing. I suppose you could then reheat the bottle to 70 degrees again (the temp at which the germs die) but then you would have to cool it down again for it to be drinkable. It all sounds a bit of a faff really.

I just kept DD's bottles in the fridge and got them out when i needed them. A quick zap in the microwave and they were ready to go.

I thought you weren't supposed to use made up formula once it had been made up for more than an hour??
So wouldn't that mean you can't make it up and keep it in the fridge until u use it??

if you make them up using hot water (70 degrees) and then cool them quickly (in a tub of cold water or straight into the fridge) you can keep them in the fridge for up to 24 hours if you need to.

Its a fekkin nightmare !

Really? Because on the box it says "For hygiene reasons do not store made up feeds. Make up each feed as required and discard any unfinished feeds after 2 hours".

My DH is a reall stickler for following the instructions to the letter and won't let me do what you have described, although that would enormously simplify things.
Is there anywhere that it is written that you can do that safely?

Taken from DoH guidelines for preparing formula:

The steps below outline the safest way to prepare and store feed for later use:
? Prepare feeds in separate bottles, not in one large container (e.g. a jug)
? Follows steps 1 to 9 of the section above ?Preparing a feed using powdered
infant formula?
? Store the feed in the fridge at below 5º C. Prepared bottles are best kept in
the back of the fridge and not in the door.
? The temperature of the fridge should be checked regularly. A fridge that is
opened frequently may need to be set at a lower temperature to ensure that
it does not rise above 5 ºC during times of frequent access. The thermostat
in older fridges without temperature settings may need to be adjusted to
ensure that the temperature is below 5º C.
? The risk of infection to a baby will be lower if the feed is only stored for a
short time. Feeds should never be stored for longer than 24 hours and this
length of time is no longer considered ideal especially for young babies

you can read the whole thing here:
www.dwrcymru.co.uk/English/library/publications/milk%20guidance/english.pdf

Oooh thanks! :-)

I used readymade room temp formula straight from the carton for night feeds .

Take a sterilised bottle and a ready made carton of milk up to bed with you. When baby wakes open carton and add to bottle to feed at room temperature.

If possible try to avoid baby getting a taste for heated up milk because it makes it much more difficult to feed them when out and about.

Don't know why embarrased toddler makes perfect sense to me :)

Mousesma - embarressed because some of my friends seem to think I was stupidly extravagant feeding ready made.

I say 56p NOT to have to go downstairs in the freeing cold is 56p well spent in my book!

sorry my previous post didn't make much sense. I have been making up formula and leaving in the fridge and before i go to bed i fill a thermos flask with boiling water. So when i need to feed in the night i just pour the boiling flask water into a jug and grab the bottle from the fridge - back in bed in 2 min. So i was wondering if you took the flask, jug, and put the bottle in a cool bag you would then not need to leave the bedroom?