Should I tell my friend she's making up formula wrong?

[thenameiwantedwastaken]

Hi there. I'm exclusively bf my DD. Noticed one of my friends who formula feeds making up a bottle for her lo when we were out the other day. She added the powder to a bottle of cold water (boiled and cooled, I guess). From what I've read on here I think that's not what current guidelines say and that the safest thing to do is make up the feed with freshly boiled water, so as to kill any germs in the powder?

I didn't say anything at the time as I don't like to tell other mums what to do, have never made a ff myself and guess she is an intelligent woman who has read the instructions on the packet.

But now I keep thinking of her dc getting ill.

How can I broach it?

yy ladylala, there's no problem with making the bottles up with water hotter than 70degs. other than burning yourself, obv.

I too am puzzled by the resistance....there are work rounds (like the one you suggest, Aitch) that seem common-sense safe.

I also don't get why people (some of 'em!) persist in saying guidelines change all the time. They don't. 'Guidelines' = official, govt. backed and evidence-based recommendations for safety and health. They don't = 'what my HV told me in year X or what I read in a baby book in year Y.'

Guidelines for making up formula changed in 2005. Weaning age changed in 2003. This is all in the public domain. Anyone can check. Google is your friend.

These changes, in both instances, were the first ones in a long, long time.

The formula stuff changed under guidance from the European Food Safety Authority (I have just checked). This does not have the force of law. Countries are free to issue their own guidance.

Sure the 30mins thing is a bit like the

'warning - smoking kills' on cigarette packets. The companies can choose from a number of different warnings. I think one was 'smoking can cause lung cancer' etc.
They chose the most outlandish one so that people identify with it less and are best able to shrug it off.

Formula companies do their market research. The will have given different versions of instructions to groups of people to interpret, and then write them in a way that is most likely to increase sales, even if they have established that it might lead to bad practice. It is why their 'statutory' bfing line is followed by an unstatutory line about needing to eat a healthy diet to breastfeed. It isn't illegal to say it, and they have complied with the law by mentioning bfing, but the message overall, is misleading.

Midwives and health visitors wouldnt say its ok to wean at 16 weeks or make up formula feeds a certain way for example if it wasnt safe to!! its their jobs to give you safe advice. Surely experience is also a good judge of what to do whether its your own or others.

I made up all feeds and stored in fridge for DS1 now almost 6- nobody ever said it was wrong at the time. I asked the MW & HV how to do it as I had no clue was a complete beginner at all the baby stuff

mel

'its their jobs to give you safe advice', absolutely, but it doesn't mean they always do so. It is a service that is creaking at the seams and cpd is limited.

if he's six, then the advice they gave you was correct and deemed safe at the time. now it's not. things move on, advice responds to new research. i don't understand why people take that so personally...

MoonlightMcKenzie- Then surely that goes for doctors, scientists, the goverment the list could go on.... Who is ever going to give you the 100% correct advice with will guarantee no bad out come?

At the end of the day guidelines will always be just that, whether proved right or wrong parents will still do as they choose rightly or wrongly.

mel : "Midwives and health visitors wouldnt say its ok to wean at 16 weeks or make up formula feeds a certain way for example if it wasnt safe to!!"

Oh my goodness.....you would certainly think so, wouldn't you.

But it ain't so....

" its their jobs to give you safe advice. "

Indeed it is

"Surely experience is also a good judge of what to do whether its your own or others." - experience is useful. But not the whole story.

Aitch -I wasnt taking it personally I was just saying my experience. I also fed DS2 who is only 2 1/2 the same way. Any one who post arent things personally we are just saying our opinions/ experiences just like you.

i think this thread is full of people taking the fact that there is new advice out there personally. i just don't get it. if their child was fine, that's great, they dodged a bullet. why they wouldn't change their behaviour in light of new advice is utterly baffling to me. is it some twisted equality thing?

Why is it that here its ok to say that 'my 3 others dcs were ok with the old method' and yet MILs get rightly attacked on MN for saying things like 'you can put them to sleep on their front' or 'you dont need a car seat' because that was the case when they were bringing up their dcs and they havent kept up with current advice? Is there really any difference?

sorry if im being thick but why would it be an equality thing?

'Midwives and health visitors wouldnt say its ok to wean at 16 weeks or make up formula feeds a certain way for example if it wasnt safe to!!'

Can I add a word?

GOOD Midwives and health visitors wouldnt say its ok to wean at 16 weeks or make up formula feeds a certain way for example if it wasnt safe to!!

And I would say the exact same thing about doctors etc.

some weird instinct to treat all children equally.

agree giantkatestacks.

Just googled some scientific papers on dangerous germs in formula,and it seems that while formula can be contaminated, the biggest risk is
1 if you leave made up bottle for longer than 40 min, as it causes germs to multiply- just a minimal presence of bacteria in powder is not thought to be a huge risk
2 Premature babies are at much higher risk
When they investigated the e sakazii outbreak in France in 2004 they found that most of formula was incorrectly stored at the hospitals
3 To be 100% sure it is thought wise to use water at 70 degrees BUT with keeping in mind the detrimental influence of hot temperature on nutritional value of formula- NOW that's something I never thought of.

I personally have no 'weird' instinct to treat all my kids equally as such. They are individuals and are treated as needed.
If you dont have trust in doctors, HV & MW then why do you trust the goverment?

It just seems like a no win situation: either prepare with cold water and run (tiny) risk of infection or always use hot water and kill the good stuff? Hmmmm...

tell me about that, winnie. i remember seeig stuff about heating up bm a while back.

mel, i'm glad you had a good experience with your hv (so far as you know) but there are plenty of instances on mn where they are handing out utterly rubbish advice.

what good stuff? do you have any links? i don't think the gastro risk is tiny, not at all. it's just not that fatal.

lol at 'not that fatal?'

I like this discussion!!

I am a passionate Breastfeeding champion, so all this faffing around with bottles and formula just seems ridiculous. As to the 'babies don't die' response to FF - well, maybe not anymore. But the impact on health is great. We have a population where children are obese and developing Type 2 diabetes at 10 years of age! I was the first to breastfeed in my family for 3 generations. I knew no-one who breastfed. I continued to breastfeed each of my children for over 2 years, and they are the healthiest children in the extended family - between the 3 of them they have had antibiotics twice in their combined ages of 18 years! (they're 9, 6 and 3)

Our Mum bottlefed my brother, sister and I. 39 years ago she was a new Mum, and the push to breastfeed was overwhelming (1970!) so she was given no help, support or advice to make up bottles. 2 years later, as an experienced mother and with the push to BF dying down a bit, she had support and advice. By 1982 when my sister was born, there were further changes to guidelines, but she was a 3rd-time Mum and there was the assumption that she knew what to do.

These days, my brother is ill virtually every other month, and on regular gastro-intestinal medication. My sister has a very low immune system, as do her own 2 children (both bottlefed) and they are ill just about every other week. One of them is always on anti-biotics. Last year they missed so much school they spent more time at home! My sister has allergies and is lactose intolerant (though how much is hyperchondria is difficult to know!) - with no family history of allergies or related disorders.

So really, I think we're wasting our time trying to tell anyone who is formula feeding how to make up bottles safely. Once you decide to bottle-feed, it's all downhill..

mel - if people dont trust the govt guidelines just because it's the govt (and that's fair enough!) they can read the papers the guidelines are based on - they're all in the public domain.

Actually, it's worth remembering that policies like safe formula feeding or weaning age are neither of them vote winners or even relevant to political campaigning. So chances are, given the amount of consultation and research that goes into these guidelines, long before they come anywhere near a minister, by scientific and medical and health bodies, we can be pretty sure that the guidelines can be trusted....some not-very-good HVs and midwives persist in not doing their jobs well, sadly.

By The Way - did you know formula has been sitting in a powder mountain for up to 7 years?

Doesn't really matter how long you leave it out the fridge now, does it?

ah, but mummy369, your study sample is of no more relevance than my two largely ff healthy belters. loads of us ff, in fact we're waaaay in the majority, it would be nice if we weren't being baffled and hampered by formula manufacturers when it comes to getting info on the immediate safety of the product.

of course it matters, mummy369. that's the WHOLE POINT of using a temp that will kill the bacteria.