How do you prepare formula? Straw poll!

[AmIGoingMad]

Hi!
I'm just wondering how many people do what the midwives say and prepare each feed of formula as you need it. There seem to be so many ways that people go about it and I'm curious. Do you:

1. Prep each feed as you need it?

1. Boil water, add formula, put bottles in the fridge until you need them? ( if so do you cool them before putting them in fridge?)

1. Boil water, put water in bottles in the fridge, take out and add formula as you need them?

1. Use the ready made cartons/ bottles of formula?

With DS we spent a fortune on the ready made stuff and used very little powder formula as we couldn't get organised. This time around I'd rather not use all ready made and have been doing ok with prepping while its still early days and I'm at home with DH still on paternity leave. But I am thinking about making up in advance as dd gets very irate waiting for the bottle to be ready and feeding obviously hasn't a settled into a pattern yet as she's so little.

Sorry for essay and thanks in advance!

1. Don't cool. Put straight in.

3

Then heat in evil microwave

Please don't add formula to the cooled water. Formula can contain some pretty nasty bugs including salmonella and the advice to add the formula to water above 70 degrees is to kill the bugs in the powder, not the water as many people seem to think.

There is some guidance on the NHS website and I think the WHO website says its fine to make up bottles and store them at the back of a fridge (where its cooler) for upto 24 hours.

No2.

The whole point of faffing with hot water is that it kills any bacteria in the powder. You mustn't ever just mix the powder with cold water, pre boiled or not. Boiling the water isn't to kill bugs in the water, but to kill bacteria in the powder. A scary proportion of powder contains bacteria - the huge amount of people making formula up with cold water is responsible for all the upset tummies in ff babies that give us all a bad name. HVs are clueless and give out wrong advice.

When I started mixed feeding it seemed to take forever, then got into routine of:

Example of 7oz feed.

Sterilise bottles etc
Boil kettle. Cool for 20 mins
Add 5oz water to bottles & add teat & cap, (no need/point putting sterilised water in fridge).
Boil fresh kettle. Add boiling water to a flask with little button on top to make pouring easy.
Fill powder dispenser (available at telco for approx £1.96) with 7 scoops in each part.

When feed due, open bottle top up to 7oz with boiling water & add powder from dispenser. Shake. Voila.

You always need bottles, flask & dispenser with you but feed is ready within 30 seconds. My friend is ff & doesn't add any hot water so baby always has room temp feed, (I personally find this a bit cool for them)

Good luck

2... And cool before putting in the fridge. Like with all food you can't put anything warm in the fridge, it allows bacteria to grow.

I have twins and do option 2, making up pairs of bottles to last for next 6-8 hours. I fill the kitchen sink with cold water and place the bottles in there to cool for 20mins after I have made them up with 70 degree water. They then go in back of fridge to be brought out and heated in the bottle warmers as needed. I use ready-made when either twin has a meltdown and no feeds are made up. I also use it when taking them out and about.
Making every feed up fresh wouldn't work with twins.

I just came across this in a magazine this week.

1. Ready made.

I've not done much FF but wondered if (like the machine) a certain amount of freshly boiled water on the powder then cold boiled water to cool to the right temperature would work.

Perfect Prep

I swear by this! DS is mix fed and this is how I do his FF, before I used to make up in advance, this way it's a fresh bottle every time! Out and about we use cartons.

Amazon and babies r us do have it on offer a lot

I do 2 and 4, making bottles 2 or 3 at a time. This time (DS2 is 5 wks old) I had abandoned bf-if before I left the hospital and was given the ff leaflet which does have a section near the back saying something like "if you really have to make up formula in advance". We are scrupulous about hygiene to minimise other risks.

I also have a couple of "tricks" to make it simpler:

1. A Bosch kettle that you can set to heat the water to 80c so can make bottles instantly (similar principle to the Tommee Tippee device referenced above but more attractive in my kitchen and functions as a normal kettle the rest of the time)

1. scooping powder into the bottle first then using another bottle to measure the water, pouring it on top then swilling to mix (Dr Browns bottles so a fiddle to shake).

Oh and with DS1, DH was told to "notice" whether bottles need washing, sterilising, preparing etc, and so does without asking. You'd think it goes without saying but it didn't.

I've got a tommee tippee perfect prep machine. Was half price on amazon and is excellent. It will make a bottle (including a shot of boiling water to sterilise the powder) in 2 minutes

If I'm out, I take cartons.

Pre having the tommee tippee machine I would make up bottles twice a day. I always used boiling water. From my research, as said above, it was more important to ki the bacteria in the milk than worry about denaturing enzymes in the milk. I called HIPP organic who told me that the reason that boiling water was not recommended was to prevent scalds to parents or babies but if I was cooling, that was fine

After making up, I flash cooled in the sink with lots of ice and then stuck in the fridge.

I never premake bottles and take out - I use cartons which is probably overkill but then I don't have to worry about how long the bottle has been in the bag etc

If I was ff, I would keep a jug of cold boiled water then just dissolve powder in boiling water and top up with cold.

I make up 3-4 bottles at a time. Boil kettle (I keep a seperate one), wait 20 mins, make up bottles, flash cool, store in fridge, then serve

Bottles were only really stored in fridge for 8 hours or so, mine were all wild cluster feeders.

wash and Sterilse bottles, boil fresh water. Let water cool down, fill each bottle with the amount we need, put in fridge, take out when needed and warm up in microwave then add powder and shake
I used a big bottle of premade milk once and baby was sick. When im out I get a jug of hot water and warm up bottle

2, with a few 4s for days out. I do a bottle prep twice a day so they're only ever about 12 hours old max for DD.

1, always. I have a super quick (very safe) method too if you are interested:

In advance:
Measure out the appropriate number of scoops of powder into a clean pot.
Measure out 2/3 of the required boiled water into a sterile container - bottle or similar. So for 6 scoops this would be 120ml.
Fill a (good) Thermos with (boiled) water at around 80 degrees. Either use a thermometer or boil a litre of water in a kettle and wait 20mins.

When needed:
Put 1/3 of water at 80 degrees into a bottle (for 6 scoops this would be 60ml). Add the formula, replace the lid and shake for 10 secs.
Now add the 120ml (or whatever it is) of cool water into the hot formula, shake briefly and it's ready.
TaDa.

DD hasn't had formula for over a year now but when she was I was making up fresh each time apart from the overnight one (if needed) which I'd make, quickly cool then put in the fridge.

My method was similar to Nightfall's - I'd use half the required hot water to dissolve the powder then add previously boiled and cooled water to top it up to the correct amount. This meant the milk was ready to drink straight away. Even before the new guidelines came in, I've never understood the logic of filling bottles with boiled water and putting them in the fridge. Water doesn't 'go off'

Thanks for your replies! Lots of different methods used then. I like the half hot water plan. Where do you store the pre boiled and cooled water? Also am thinking of using the making the feed up with boiled water and cooling to keep in the fridge. I'd love to get the tommee tippee thingy but not sure the budget would stretch to that!

I used to fill a spare bottle with boiled water and keep it in the fridge to cool to top up the half/half method. I replenished as I went along - so added to it when I'd used some and it would be cool enough to use by the next bottle. I used to fill a fresh one every evening from what I can remember.

Keep it wherever you like - as mejon says water doesn't go off. We keep ours in the cupboard. If you are doing 50/50 hot and cold then you might need to keep your cold bottles in the fridge just to ensure the end temp is right. If you do 2/3 cold 1/3 hot then room temp is fine...

I had twins and mix fed and did a variety of things - used pre made for first month or so, then used to make them in batches and store in fridge, then discovered the part boiled, part cooled method and found that to be the easiest and safest way to do it.

I stuck to the make them up fresh for a while, then started doing 2. One to use, one for fridge to heat up later