What's the latest thinking on sterilising?

[francesrivis]

Please bear with me if this is a stupid question! I am currently pregnant with dc2 and am hoping to breastfeed as I did with dd1. I expressed milk from time to time, and sterilised the pump and bottles by boiling them up in a saucepan. This is a bit of a pain though and I am wondering about getting a steam steriliser - however I vaguely remember seeing something somewhere about sterilising being less essential than previously thought for bf babies - or possibly I imagined it! Any advice gratefully received.

the official stance is still to sterilise everything up to 6 months and carry on with bottles and teats till 1 year. There is a thread about not sterilising at all somewhere on here though.

just use dishwasher.

here

I breastfed ds2 and started to express when he was three months. I didn't sterilise, just used to run through the dishwasher or soak in water boiled from kettle. Now he is six months and having formula twice a day, I don't sterilise at all and bottles either go in dishwasher or I just do them in hot soapy water with bottle brush's

I never leave any left over milk sat in a bottle after a feed though, always tip it away and rinse out bottle so milk doesn't fester

Thanks for this. Don't have a dishwasher though! Has anyone tried just hand washing in hot soapy water?

Our dishwasher doesn't go on everyday so I often just to hot soapy water

I have a 5ltr container which I refresh each morning with cold water and a milton tablet and then chuck everything into that after just washing with hot soapy water. Leave it there until use, that's what they did at the hospital and it's minimum effort.