Drying pump feeding equipment

[louise265]

My baby boy is 4 weeks old this Monday. We have been bottle feeding with expressed milk and formula. I have bought an Elvie pump which I have to sterilise using the cold sterilisation method in Milton.

Does the collection bottle of the pump have to be completely dry after taking out of the Milton solution. I read that you can just take it out of the solution and use straight away but I was worried about the droplets of water still containing Milton and so being ingested by my baby boy.

I sterilise the pump once per day as recommended in the instructions, and so in between pumps I hand wash in warm soapy water (using Milton washing up liquid). Would I need to allow the collection bottle of the pump to completely dry after this too?

Just wondered what your recommendation would be?
Thank you for your help 😊

Just take out of the Milton, shake off excess and use.

I shake mine really hard and then leave to dry but I'm not exclusively expressing so don't need a really fast turn around. I've heard some people on the elvie page talking about different drying sterilisers but I've also seen mention of salad spinners which I reckon would probably do the trick and be a lot cheaper!

A couple of drops of diluted Milton is perfectly harmless.

Great thank you!
How about when I hand wash the equipment in the Milton washing up liquid? Would the bottles need to be completely dry after that? I guess the residual tap water droplets are not sterile but is it ok if he ingests small amounts of that?

As far as I know, the sterility thing primarily applies to making up formula, because a few bugs sitting in milk can multiply. Most things your baby puts in his mouth are not sterile, nor do they have to be. His fingers aren't sterile, if you were breastfeeding your nipples wouldn't be sterile. Breastmilk has natural antibacterial constituents so if you express into a clean bottle and feed immediately I wouldn't think there's an issue there. If you're storing milk, you should be aiming for sterility though.

You don't need to sterilise at all using Breastmilk, only when using formula. Just FYI :)
And yes wet and shaken is fine if you are sterilising.