Going away for 4nights - pls don't tell me I need to lug the steriliser with me?

[BusyCee]

DS2 is 6mo and has x1 bottle of formula at bedtime, from a Tommee Tippee bottle. Obvs we usually sterilise this lonely bottle every day. But we're off for x4 nights tomorrow, staying at 2 different houses. Apart from boiling for 10mins is there any way to sterilise the bottle without taking the ENORMOUS steriliser? Do I need to bother at this stage, when he chews all sorts of unsavoury items bought to him by DS1?

There are bags you can buy that you pop on the microwave to sterilise things. Otherwise I would just pop in in some hot water and sir dry.

Or you can take a couple of Milton tablets and stick one tablet in the sink of water with the bottle for 15min, job done! Have a lovely trip away.

Can u get a travel steriliser thing? One you pop in microwave that does one bottle at a time

I have always used the microwave bags, but you can also buy bags that you add water to for cold water sterilisation.

Also, Mothercare used to do a bottle that you could sterilise in a microwave upside down, with water in the cap.

The mam bottles are self sterilising too. Unscrew base pop the top/teat on the base, screw back together, measure 30ml of water in the cap (there's a line) top in, place cap over the top and zap for three mins

isn't boiling the easiest option? dont have to take anything with?

You can get single use pre sterilised bottles, I got given some by a friend in a gift hamper when my baby was born. I suspect they are from boots.

I would just take some steri tablets, and a Tupperware big enough to fit the bottle in.

you don't need to sterilise at all. Wash with very hot soapy water and rise or hot cycle in dishwasher. Presumably a 6 mo baby puts hands on carpet etc then hands in mouth. If BF he will have good immunity.
And this from a Fusspot!
P.S this was advice from my midwife re expressed bottles for my newborn.

The advice is different for breastmilk because it's much less susceptible to bugs due to the immune factors in it

I use medela microwave bags for sterilising when travelling. Are fabulous. And I sterilised till 12 months. Yes I know re crawling babies but the bacteria that can grow in milk are nasty.

You can get single use steriliser bags in Boots (in packs of 7). They have a tablet already inside - you just unfold the (plastic) bag, pour water into it and voila, instant disposable steriliser. It has tie handles so you can suspend it from a handle or something while the stuff is inside sterilising. They are very compact and hardly weigh anything. And they hold LOADS.

Another vote for a Milton tablet in the sink if standard of washing up is a bit questionable or dishwasher. I wouldn't be bothering with expense or faff of getting anything else.

You do need to sterilise any bottles/equipment used for formula milk - this is due to the bugs present in powdered formula. I would take some Milton tabs or similar and just use basin/sink.

Personally I wouldn't worry about it- just wash it thoroughly and then pour some boiling water through the teat.

You don't need to sterilize bottles from 6 months. As long as the bottle is washed thoroughly with hot soapy water & the feed is made up correctly, he'll be juste fine.

Lovely, thanks for the advice. I'll get me to Boots this arvo, look for some compact travel sterilising kit (to keep OH confident I'm not poisoning him), and if not will just do decent thorough washes and not worry about it.

Happy New Year, All

Just buy some of these pre-sterilised disposable bottles and these teats also pre-sterilised

My local sainsburys and tesco sell them as well, they come in sma gold or the red toddler follow-on milk.

Yep, I'd suggest pre-sterilised, single-use bottles and teats as recommended by Spock. Wasteful and relatively expensive but save so much faff.

They also take up loads of space too as well as being £££s.

I use boots own steriliser tablets (about a 3rd of the cost of Milton).
Then get yourself to poundland and grab a Tupperware.

Job done for under £5.

Another vote for the mothercare self sterilising bottles - brilliant. I used them for ds1 and was seriously impressed by them, as we're lots of the people who saw me using them and couldn't figure out what was happening, as they were used to their massive electric or microwave sterilisers or fading around with buckets of water and sterilising tablets.

With ds2 they were great in a different way as he was almost exclusively breast fed. So just need to have a couple around for when he occasionally needed a bottle if I was out and had left milk behind for him. Meant I didnt need to have loads of expensive sterilising stuff around to be very rarely used.

Oh and they take lots of different teats - we didn't like the mothercare ones and used a variety if others including Avent, nuk and tommy tippee.

At six months I would just wash in hot soapy water and then rinse in boiling water from the kettle.

Oh and the dishwasher thing can be a bit of a red herring - it's true in some countries but not others... In the US, they typically run their dishwashers at 90+ degrees and so they get hot enough to sterilise everything, making sterilisers fairly uncommon over there I believe, as everything can just go in the dishwasher.

Over here, dishwashers wash at much lower temperatures - often 60 degrees will be the hottest they get to, so they don't sterilise things to the same degree, hence the popularity of sterilisers over here.

However, with the rise of the internet, it's easy to look up information online and be looking at an American site that says 'put stuff in the dishwasher to sterilise it' and for that to get reposted on a UK site as 'put stuff in the dishwasher to sterilise it' without the all important background details that are missing on the American one because they are writing for an American audience who will have the dishwashers that do the very hot washes...