Tips for bottle feeding and longhaul travel

[monkeyblonde]

Off to the US next week with 6 month old. Please give me your tips for the flight and staying in a hotel too! Last time round I was breastfeeding so not sure what to plan, TIA!

Hi, I took a mainly-bottle-fed 3 month old to Australia last year. My tips:

• take enough empty sterilised bottles to last you the whole journey.
• I recommend those drawstring sterilising bags that come with sterilising tablets in, for on-the-go cold water sterilising. Even if you'll have a steriliser when you get there it's worth having one of these bags for the journey in case you're stuck in an airport or in transit for way longer than you expect. I once spent 18 hours stuck in Moscow airport (before I had children, thankfully).
• buy ready-made cartons/bottles of formula once you're past security. Otherwise you may be asked to open and taste some of the bottles - I was told at heathrow that they were meant to ask us to open half the cartons we were taking through, which would have led to a lot of wastage. At heathrow you can reserve bottles in advance to collect at Boots past security, which I recommend doing,
• if you don't have access to sterilising equipment in the hotel, the bags are good again. One is good for 24 hours. Don't do what I did recently and try to guesstimate the amount of Milton tablets needed for a plastic tubful of water. I made it up too strong and my baby refused to drink from the bottles as they'd picked up a lot of the Milton taste.
• a bottle (or dummy) is good for takeoff and landing, for their little ears.

Thanks so much for your reply, very helpful!

Have you or anyone travelled out of the US? How did you arrange formula for the return flight?

I've never travelled out of the US so can't help I'm afraid. When we came back from Australia I really can't remember what we did - must have been ready made cartons as I remember having an argument with pre-departure security about my tiny scissors which I wanted to use to open the cartons, which had been perfectly acceptable on the way out but verboten on the way home. Worth checking with the airport you're flying from, I'd say. Also, I found formula in Aus to be slightly different in formulation - their aptamil gave my little boy green poo - so something worth being aware of.