When should I stop sterilising?

[MamaBear17]

My dd is one next week and I am still sterilising her bottles. My HV told me I could stop using the steriliser at 6 months but she seemed too young so I carried on. We don't have a dishwasher so we hand wash everything and im a little phobic of germs. I know it is silly considering my daughter puts everything in her mouth! x

I stopped sterilising once they were old enough to pick things up and shove them in their mouths. I figured that I couldn't sterilise everything and would go insane trying. So I stopped.

IMO you need to stop ages ago now. You can be too careful, a little exposure to germs helps their immune system and you can't protect her forever. Wait til she starts school!

loads of people will come along to say not to bother, but I'm pretty sure it's the milk that is the problem. So by sterilising anything she drinks formula from, you are doing the right thing.
Water cups and plates/bowls etc don't need to be.

DefiniteMaybe that is what I thought. I have always hated the fact that I had to resort to formula and in the early days I sterilised everything twice (with milton solution and then with the steam steriliser) because I was so scared that my failure to produce booby milk was exposing her to germs. I think my family thought I had lost my marbles (looking back I probably had!!). It also doesn't help that since she started nursery she has had one illness after another. I dunno. Perhaps I'll wait until we switch to cows milk x

I don't sterilise. Never have.

I plan to sterilise milk bottles and cups until at least one as I don't like the thought of dried on stale milk. I also like bottles sparkling clean. I have never sterilised spoons and bowls and ds mouths everything at the moment. I do religiously milton wash his high chair but that's cos I love the smell

The illness at nursery thing is very common btw. I ran a baby room for years and babies always seemed to pick up everything at first, I think its because they are exposed to lots of different germs. They bulid up immunity though which is good later on as they probably won't have much time off school!