Golly! I have read all the way through this thread, for interest's sake, and it seems as if my ds's are lucky to have made it out of babyhood, as I did pretty much everything wrong!
I used to make up a whole day's supply of bottles at one time and store them in the fridge - no-one said anything about formula having bugs in it back then. Sometimes I used cool boiled water from the kettle - so again the nasty bugs wouldn't have been killed. Other times I used almost boiling water so the nasty chemicals would have leeched out into the milk!!
I also used to heat bottles in the microwave, and when a specific warning against this appeared on the formula tin, I consulted my HV who said that this change was because of the risk of the feed not being shaken after heating and hotspots remaining in the milk to scald the baby. She said I was clearly being sensible about the way I used the microwave and to carry on.
My ds's are now 11, 13 and 15, so I can only assume that the guidelines have changed radically in the intervening years - though I do have to wonder if the guidelines might be a little OTT as the formula manufacturers seek to protect themselves against possible legal action if a child becomes ill or worse.
Now hygiene means getting ds1 to wash the oil off his hands before supper, when he's been tinkering with his mountain bike again; and trying to persuade ds2 to cut his fingernails so that we don't have enough dirt for a whole potato field underneath them.
I do also question whether a domestic steam bottle sterilizer will kill all bacteria, because when I worked in operating theatres we used to have to sterilize the instruments for far longer, at higher temperatures and under greater than atmospheric pressure before we used them.
I would also be interested to know what the incidence of enterobacter sakazakii infection in the UK is, as a percentage of bottlefed babies - it's something I had not heard of at all when I was bottlefeeding, and would genuinely like to know more.
sunnygirl.