Microwave - Oh my God, what have I been doing?!

[Murl]

I formula feed my 8 wk old, and have been heating up her bottle in the microwave - I have always been very careful re hot spots and so thought I had overcome the negatives of using a mocrowave - but have JUST read about microwaving damaging the nutrient value of the milk - I never heard of this and would not have used a microwave if I had. I am now full of guilt for choosing the quick option of using the microwave to heat the bottle and putting my babys health at risk

Does any one have any other info on the dangers of using a microwave? am I the only one using this to heat the bottles? I honestly never new there was a danger.

Feeling terrible!

Is it formula or breastmilk? I think that there might be a difference?

Don't feel terrible, I microwaved all ds's bottles from start to finish, still do and still will (not such a tragedy now, he's 2.8 and probably shouldn't be having them)

Can you link us to the article please?

ps. Don't feel guilty. We all make mistakes.

I think it's just in breastmilk that the microwave kills the nutrients but could be wrong.
Is there a website or number on the back of the formula packet? You could check it out there but I think it will be fine- lots of people do it.

there is all sorts of info on the net (as usual!) but lots of sites say about the milk being damaged by microwaving.. eg. www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/formula/warmbottleexpert. however, having had another look alot of the sites are more opinion than fact. still worrying though.

It is formula I am warming up.

don't feel terrible. but if you're really worried, what dh and i do to warm botles in the microwave is to add the formula after so really, we're just heating the water. this way saves time waiting for the kettle to cool down sufficiently. hth

How can microwaving damage the nutrients in formula milk ? All microwaving does is agitate the molecules of the water in which the formula is suspended, causing the liquid to heat up. (Well that's how I always understood microwaving food to work)

Maybe heating breastmilk kills off friendly bacteria in it but surely that's dependant on the temperature actually achieved through heating it up.

My health visitor and midwife saw me microwave bottles when they visited me at home. Surely they would have advised me it was damaging the nutrient content if there is actually research to demonstrate this.

Stop panicking, I've got 2 perfectly sturdy, healthy and very bright children who had microwaved formula milk for the first 12 months of their lives.

Hi Murl, just make sure that the bottles you're using are BPA-free, as the heat from the microwave can cause BPA to leach into the milk. I recently discarded my ds's old bottles and replaced after being made aware of this.

I think with breastmilk there are issues because the immune factors in it would die off from being heated up too much (more likely to happen due to hotspots in microwave). But with formula I don't think it's an issue. But I don't know. I hope someone who does comes along, I would like to.

Murl - If you overheat the milk you can destroy some of the nutrients in the milk in the same way as if you over boil carrots some of the nutrients are lost.

Just using the microwave to heat to an appropriate temperature should have no negative effects on the milk (either breast or formula)

Also, if the milk is not frozen you are unlikely to have 'hot spots' (uneven heat in microwaved items is usually related to how the electromagnetic wave causes frozen and liquid water molecules to behave differently) but of course you must always assume that there could be a hot spot and treat accordingly.

I don't think you should be too worried, as long as you aren't boiling the milk each time!

MrsPurr - You're right about the biological proteins in the milk, they would become 'denatured' if they got too hot. This would be the case though however if you heated them too much by any method IYSWIM.

Thanks Octotunes (great name!). I appreciate either formula or milk proteins could be denatured by overheating, but am I right in thinking there are actual living phagocyte type things in breastmilk i.e. living immune-type cells which would also be denatured/killed if overheated? Am wondering whether this might be the reasoning for the claim I read somewhere that if you freeze breastmilk you lose a lot of the benefit from it too.

MrsPurr - TBH I don't know about that, but it sounds reasonable, 'tis wonderful stuff!

I do feel it is more from testing situations where they 'over' heat the milk in a variety of containers and then do their measurements.

I heat a small amount of water, when hot, add the powder and make up to the required level with cooled boiled water.

thanks for all your comments - have certainly stopped fretting so much now! I lonly use the microwave to take the chill off the milk so it certainly does not get anywhere close to 'hot' so don't see how it can damage the milk - and bottles are BPA free.

Panic over! (although now only using microwave for night bottles!). Thanks again for comments

Glad your happier Murl.