How long to sterilise bottles/dummies for? Or is 75deg dishwasher long enough?

[detachablehoof]

My daughter is 5months and I've always sterilised her bottles and dummies in the microwave. I'm wondering how long I need to carry on for? NHS official guidance is until 12 months but that seems like overkill given that she's already chewing whatever grubby thing she can get her hands on, plus I don't sterilise her spoons/bowls.

I have a 75deg setting on my dishwasher, does anyone know if this would do? Apparently when making up bottles the water has to be 70deg to kill the bacteria in the powder.... So surely a 75deg wash should be OK?!

Can't find any info online so would be glad of your thoughts!!

Sorry, title should read, "is 75deg dishwasher enough"

I sterilised bottles until they were on normal milk because fórmula can contain killer germs but dummies I was very lax with, I think dishwasher is fine for them at 5mo.

At 6 months I stopped all together. Like you say they're picking everything up off the floor and it goes straight to their mouth. Everything gets washed on the auto cycle of the dishwasher. I wasn't too bothered about everything being super sterile. Their digestive systems should have a fair amount of natural bacteria by then to handle it. I think it would be different though if baby was prem.

Tricky one, my gut instinct is that it would be fine but I don't want to take any risks!!

Bottles need sterilising for as long as you use formula

There's nothing wrong with carrying on sterilising bottles if you want to. It was a personal choice to stop. Formula goes into hot water so should kill off most if not all bacteria there anyway. I just felt that once I was giving her food which isn't sterile and which wasn't in a sterile bowl then there wasn't anything different with just using a bottle straight from the dishwasher. It's clean and she needed to get used to environmental bacteria. She doesn't have any health problems so I didn't feel that there were any high risks. I monitored her nappies after and they were no different so it didn't upset her tummy. It's completely personal though and you just have to do what you think is right for you and your baby.

@CatInADoghouse that's what logic tells me too :)

They say that if using formula you should continue to sterilise as bottles can be tricky to get fully clean and bacteria can breed

As others have said, the advice to sterilise after 6 months is to make sure there is no formula residue.

I'm afraid I don't know the answer about the dishwasher. If you do use it just make sure you don't wash the bottles with any sauce covered plates etc. I stupidly did this and ended up with orange bottles (used the dishwasher for cleaning not sterilising)!

I sterilised until PFB DD was 2

When I moved to the USA (with my steriliser) everyone was bemused, they just used the dishwasher on hot.