Preparing/travelling with formula overseas

[3questionmarks]

Got some questions on another thread.
Would welcome the perspective of some seasoned family travellers

Apols if this has been done to death, but could use some advice.

A friend in France was advised by her MW to make formula with Evian mineral water (without boiling it). Mineral waters vary in their sodium content, so not all are suitable for making formula - look for ones that state that they are suitable for low sodium diets (and don't forget that boiling concentrates the minerals).

I haven't done any long haul flights with dd, but on short haul flights taking a number of her bottles with water in (which I had to taste) and a tin of formula (which they weren't at all interested in) was not a problem, but in the UK they took my mineral water bottle off me (but coming back from France they let me keep it). So if you want to take mineral water, put it in your dc's bottles!

We went to Australia last year and I was very worried about how to take formula with us. We found that getting through the UK airports was the hardest bit.

What we found worked for us was:

1. in the UK aiports, I booked cartons of formula at Boots in the departure lounge (after security and x-ray machines) - this meant that I had enough for the flight and didn't have to worry about tasting water or powder formula and making it unsterile

1. If you use SMA you can buy sachets of formula, which makes it easy to carry through security in other countries as they didn't make us taste it and you can always slip ones into pockets or other parts of your hand luggage

1. we took our own formula in our suitcase so that we had some for our first few days of our trip(we double wrapped in plastic bags to stop it spilling into our suitcase if the box broke)

1. M&S sell a cheap 3 pack of clear travel washbags for £5. They were great to put liquids in for getting through security - we used the smallest washbag for cosmetics and drugs such as sudacream or calpol; middle size for nappies and wipes (useful for pulling out of the bag and taking to the small plane loos!) and the large one for carrying bottles and formula. It meant that getting through security was so much easier - we had the small washbag at the top of the hand luggage ready to pull out for security checks. In Asia and Australia, they just asked us to put any baby food or formula through the security xray machine separately from the rest of our hand luggage - the large washbag has a handle and is see through so this was really easy for us and the airport staff.

1. Evian water is suitable for low sodium diets and therefore suitable for making up formula. We used other brands overseas if we couldn't get Evian - but checked salt/sodium levels to see if it was suitable.

1. I phoned Cow& Gate helpline to see if they sold their formula in Australia and they told us of the right brand to buy over there (as it was made by their sister company and sold under a different name). they also explained that our formula was a whey or casein one and what to look out for on the overseas formulas to make sure it was the most similar formula

1. As I was worried before we went on the flight, I sterlised the bottles and put water in one of the bottles. Also packed some formula in a Avent formula carrier pot. The xray man made me taste the water of one bottle and didn't make me taste the formula. The other bottles were empty but sterile ready for the ready made formula carton from boots.