Sterilising Bottles

[Chiccadum]

At what point do you stop sterilising bottles, my 10mnth dd is practically running with the furniture now and is constantly crawling on the floor and picking things up and putting them in her mouth, she no longer has milk and only uses her bottles for a drink of juice before bed as she is finding it difficult to get the hang of drinking out of a juice cup.

You can safely swap sterilising for hot soapy water or a dishwasher now. Treat her the same as you, provided you observe basic hygeine . Mind you my ds is 16months and some days I barely run his cup under the tap!! When you say she no longer has milk, I assume you mean she's drinking her milk from a cup.

No aloha, she doesn't like milk at all, she stopped having altogether at about 5 months, my health visitor says this is ok because i give her a breakfast with milk and luckily she loves cheese, yogurts and other dairy products. She is coming on in leaps and bounds now without formula & when we went to see her heart consultant i asked him and he said there was no problem and not to worry about her refusing milk.

We never sterilised at all and both my kids are robustly healthy and have never (fingers crossed) had vomiting or anything like. Washing should certainly be fine from 10 months.

I dunno Chiccadum... I really would have thought babies under 1 need either formula or breastmilk -- they need that balance of nutrients right in real/artificial milk. How do you know she's getting enough iron, for instance???

A pot of yohurt has the same 'goodness' as a 1/4 pt of milk approx. so a peice of cheese, a couple of pots of yoghurt and breakfast with milk still adds up to the nutrients from a pint of milk. Green veggies also have loadsof calcium and iron, so there is no actual need for kids to drink milk at all. It is guidelines to say the norm, rather than you must feed milk!!

In answer your question Zebra about Iron, she was very badly jaundiced as a newborn and as a result is anaemic and on iron supplements and folic acid until she is one, all her blood tests have been normal but consultant just wants to keep her on medication till 12 months.

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I just sterilise teats indefinitely, as those tiny places are where milk-loving bacteria can breed. It seems easier than getting really scrupulous with a bottle brush, but this will do just as well, as others have said. I think they get all the help their immune systems need to build up with what they pick up from the carpet, so I'm quite careful with food-bourne bacteria.