do you all really sterilize to 12 months?

[codswallop]

seems to me the minute they can crawl its a waste of time!

lETS LIBERATE OURSElVES!!

I'm with you codswallop. Sterilising is a pain in the ass and a complete waste of time!

is nt this interesting?!

Oh, looks like I am the only saddo who sterilized religously until dd was 12 months Being a first baby I suppose I was frightened to deviate from the recommendations and lacking in confidence (convinced that dd would get some horrendous stomach bug if I stopped sterilizing a minute before she was 1 year old, which of course is ridiculous). I don't think I will be sterilizing for 12 months with ds because I agree with all the comments here. Have to be honest though and say that I don't really find it too much hassle, only takes 8 minutes in steam sterilizer. What I do find a real pain is making up the formula, choosing a quiet time to measure out and making sure no-one has re-boiled the kettle etc

Dont worry Melly - I did too for ds1 but i dont think it will happen for ds2 - we do at the moment for the odd bottle he is having but once I start weaning I imagine that will stop too!

You're not alone Melly, I plan to continue sterilising bottles, teats and dummies until DD is 1, in 3 months time.

whats with the kettle reboiling Melly?

Water is best to be boiled only once so as not to destroy all the elements in it, codswallop. It actually tastes better as well for tea and coffee.

oops - never hurt mine...

My dd is nearly 9 months and I still sterilise bottles for milk only

also shouldn't reboil water because that concentrates the minerals in it, the more reboilings, the greater the concentration.

have a look at the thread on baby care in other countries. The Swiss, with their famously pristine country, barely sterilise at all!

tnak ypu ! that was my thread - isnt it fascinating?

I have to say that lots of you are saying you don't sterilize, and then saying that everything goes in the dishwasher. I think that the dishwasher is pretty much the equivalent of sterilizing, as it has pretty hot steam. I don;t have a dishwasher, so I have sterilized the breast pump and occasional bottle. Now ds is 5 months and everything goes into his mouth anyway, I don;t bother with plates and spoons, but I will continue to sterilize the breast pump as long as I keep using it. It is a pain having the sterilizer on the worksurface though!
incidentally, I had a spoon and bowl set form Mothercare which said suitable from 4 months, and the spoon melted in the sterilizer.....

milch - it's probably BECAUSE the Swiss have their famously pristine country that they don't have to sterilise at all.

Whenever I visit (my mother's Swiss, but we don't go often), the whole place seems positively sterile to me! No extra effort needed! My house, on the other hand...

Steppemum, was it the winnie the pooh weaning set that melted ? I had one of those in green and the same thing happened to me. The handle was fine but the actual spoon end was just a lump of mangled plastic.

my hv here in Australia said that they are considering changing the avice (as they regularly do!) on sterilising. That they made just advise washing in dishwasher or v.hot soapy watre and hot rinse for bottles etc. from birth.
When she told me this I stopped worrying so much (dd was about 6 months anyway).
Now at 10 months never sterilise anything. Also give tap water if kettle is too hot with no qualms as she sucks the water out of the flannel in the bath!

Again, can't find the bloomin study but there was one that showed a decreased risk of asthma etc if dishes/bottles were just washed in hot soapy wanter rather than sterilised - it's that link again between our too clean homes and allergies. No chance of that in my house, not with the cat and my housekeeping skills.

Yes it was a winnie the pooh bowl and spoon, purple, and the end of the spoon melted. It said on the packet it could go in the dishwasher, but a sterilizer is obviously that bit hotter. I was already overseas, so couldn't take it back, but I was cross. All the books say sterilize, and then Mothercare of all people sell something for 4 months that can't be sterilized!!

Am feeling all liberated by this. DP sterilised religiously till about 13 months, but it's SUCH a hassle that I've been wondering whether it's worth it for number 2. And that constant exhausted dropping things, shoving them back in the steriliser, dropping them again scenario...

Didn't sterilise anything at all for dd now aged 6 years, she has never had a gastro bug, didn't boil water either but used Evian from the bottle.

I melted that Winnie the Pooh spoon in the microwave steriliser too! I was sure the packaging said `suitable for all forms of sterilisation' but I'd thrown it away by the time I did the deed. The next edition of the catalogue said not to microwave sterilise that set so I suppose they had complaints.

I did sterilise bottles for a year because I'm paranoid and because milk is a particularly good growth medium for bugs. But I didn't bother with weaning stuff after about 5 months.

only milk bottles after about 6-8 months, as you said once they crawl, they can touch (and mouth) anything!!

Only ever sterilised bottles and gave that up at 5m as DD was crawling and it seemed to me that the manky carpets in the house we'd just moved into were more of a health hazard. Also used to make up formula in bottles and give thenm to DD straight from the fridge, if we went out they were in my bag for as long as we were out (18 hours in one case) and DD suffered no ill effects. Used to make me laugh to see people struggling with those formula containers and trying to console screaming baby as water wasn't warm...

Can someone explain to me why we're supposed to keep formula so sterile? I used a dispenser, and just tipped the requisite amount into a bottle of boiled water, but I'm quite aware that a number of people - including my admirable childminder - were much more easygoing about it and just took bottles around with them. Which I'd do with a normal bottle of cows milk, dammit, or is that where i'm going wrong?

I reckon that cow's milk has been sterilised (pasteurised) recently, whereas I presume they make formula from pasteurised milk, but that will have been some time ago. All that shelf time... time for nasties to grow. You hear rare stories about babies dying from nasty bacteria in formula --- this is in western Europe, where parents followed all directions to prepare it properly, but some bad bacteria still survived.