Nursery wants pre-made bottles !

[workingmom2000]

DS will be starting nursery full-time in a few weeks at 6 months. I called them today to find out what all we need to bring in when we start and they require readymade bottles.

As ds is only going to be 6 months, he is still having 5 feeds a day i.e. 3 of these would end up being at the nursery. I thought premade bottles was considered risky ! so now i'm not so sure how to go about it?
Do I just prepare the bottles using powder in the morning and keep them in the bottle bag until I deliver them to the nursery upon which they put them in the fridge? Or should we use the cartons to prepare the milk?

Has anyone had to do this?

You can get a formula dispenser (you no those little tupperware pots with 3 seperate compartments), you measure out the amount of scoops needed in each one and just have the bottles filled with the boiled water. The nursery should put the water in the fridge (when cooled down) and just add the formula powder as and when needed.

You can take th ready made cartons if you wish.

The nurseries have to ask for ready made bottles if the don;t have a specific, seperate milk kitchen.

This was standard at my nursery - and unfortunately cartons were also a no no. I used to make up the bottles the night before with boiled water (left them to cool)and then added the baby formula in the morning before setting off to nursery. The staff would then put tags on the bottles with my children's names on them and then put them in the fridge ready to be used.

crumbs, we just had to send in the tin of formula and they did all the prep there
after all what happens if your child wants more milk on a certain day? admittedly that probably is more of a problem before 6 months but even so it seems a bit much to ask

surely they shold follow the most up to date advice though which is make them up as they go along rather than before hand?

I have read about this issue on other threads and did not want to say anything that was wrong.

However, when DS1 and DS2 were babies (6 - 8 years ago) we used to steam sterilise Avent bottles, then make them straight out of the steriliser, make up the bottles immediatley with cooled boiled water and then put the powder straight in shake and put them in the fridge with the plastic Avent top over the teat. We reheated using a microwave and gave a good shake to prevent hotspots.

It never caused a problem. The entire process is sterile and then regfrigerated from start to finsh. I would not object to the nursery asking for made up bottles that were kept in a fridge but care must be taken in ensuring a sterile process throughout.

I am biochemist by training so I know a lot about culturng and growing bacteria and I never considered this an unsafe practice but I always took great care to mantain sterile working practices and never left made up bottles more than 8 hours or ever stored them outside a fridge - not even for 5 minutes.

What do others think on this as I know others are very worried about pre-made bottles and stomach infections?

I didn't realise pre-made bottles were considered risky - it's what I did with my three as babies - used to make up 5/6 bottles in one go and then store in fridge up until 24 hours - I'm sure that's what you can still do.

I'm sure it won't be a problem as long as you label with baby's name and time you made up the bottle.

I know the new(ish) guidelines say you shouldnt make up bottles in advance.

Obviously you dont want to expose your child to health risks. But if you have to make up your bottles in advance then take solace from the fact that thousands of babies have been fed this way before the guidelines changed and are now healthy strapping children

agree about formula dispenser can hold formula and jsut be added to the cooled water when needed.

frasersmummy (and others)

I have wondered whether these guidelines to not to make pre-made bottles has only come out in the last few years to primarily protect manufacturers from legal risks - and only secondarily babies.

I suspect that sometimes people who make pre-made bottles are not always strict enough with hygiene and so there have been cases of infection so the manufacturers have taken to advising people not to do it at all.

What you are saying seems to confirm these are new(ish) guidelines and have only been introduced since 2002 or after.

surely it's not good for the temperature of a fridge and the other food in it to suddenly be joined by, say, one and a half litres of boiling liquid?

i thought even in the old days the advice was to plunge the bottles to cool them quickly before the fridge?

ABetaDad - sorry, but you have this wrong. I have sat in on meetings with the Department of Health officials discussing exactly this issue.

The reason bottles are meant to be made up when needed is that powdered infant milk is not a sterile product. It can contain bacteria. Adding it to water of 70 degrees ensures bacteria is killed.

You can read the information here click on the download link at the bottom.

Ilanak - there seems to be a conflict between what we and many other parents did a few years ago, what the OPs nursery is asking her to do now and what the Department of Health is now saying.

Even more bizarre is that I read the 2004 Guidelines on the link you gave and it shows a picture of full Avent bottles lined up in fridge being stored. Just as we used to do.

I then read the new 2007 Guidelines and it does suggest that formula should always be made fresh. Just as you say. There is no photo of bottles in the fridge. However, I read all the way to the end of the Guidelines and find a section that says you can store ready made bottles in a fridge and carry it in a cool bag.

It seems that Govt guidelines are ambiguous. In fact their advice to use fresh bottles where possible and only store where necessary is exactly what we used to do back in 2002. These are not really new guidelines at all, just a shift in emphasis, but people seem to believe you should NEVER store milk which is not what the 2007 Guideline say. It says you can do both but fresh is better.

The followng passgae in the Guidelines provides the advice and reassurance the OP needs about carrying and storing milk to the nursery:

---
If it is not possible to follow the advice above, or if you need to transport a feed ? for example to a nursery or childminder ? you should prepare the feed at home and cool it in the back of the fridge.
Take it out of the fridge just before you leave and carry it in a cool bag with an ice pack. Use it within four hours, or if you reach your destination within four hours, take it out of the cool bag and store it at
the back of the fridge. Feeds should never be stored for longer than 24 hours although this length of time is no longer considered ideal, especially for young babies. It is always safer to make up a fresh feed whenever possible.

right... so what's the reason the nursery can't just make feeds up, then? i'd have thought the temp in a nursery fridg would be up and down like a hoor's drawers.

thanks ABetaDad for this information. I was considering complaining infact to the Department of Health/Ofsted because they should not allow such nurseries to operate (and make such requests) in contradiction to the government.

I wonder myself why the nursery cannot just make up the feeds ! They do normally have kitchens and provide lunches, so its not like that they're space constrained.

The nursery SHOULD be making them up. This would be best practice as they can ensure the bottles are sterilised, the water is at the right temperature, and nothing is sitting around.

I used to run nurseries and when the new guidelines came in, we asked parents to supply the milk (powder or cartons) and we would do it.

it's not so much the leaving premade bottles in the fridge that concerns me (I did that with my 2), it's the laziness of nurseries
they should be following uptodate advice and they should make it up on the premises

Oh and if the nursery has a baby room, they should have an area within it (it does not have to be a seperate room - it wasn't at ours) that has a sink (not a nappy one) and a fridge for exactly this purpose.

it just pisses me off that we pay all this money for nursery care and we have to supply formula, wipes and nappies and now they want us to supply boiled water and bottles too
for older children they supply toilets, potties and food, but for babies sod all except staff

sorry rant over

Nursery's don't like to make up feeds because there is more room for errors to be made - just with the number of scoops in a bottle/getting the feed mixed up/hygiene concerns. It's actually safer for you to provide the bottles made up. It's also very time consuming for nurseries.

I guess it all comes down to cost in the end. I suppose they woud say they are still within the 2007 guidelines (as I described above) but as you say it is still not best practice.

The nursery we used in 2002 - 2004 certainly made all bottles up fresh although they liked parents to provide bottles and formula powder so that the baby did not get upset with constant changing between different bottles and types of formula at nursery and home.

[We only used a couple of fridge stored ones ourselves at night for convenience and always made the rest up fresh even when travelling].

those wee tommee tippee powder holders that stay in the neck of the bottle are great imo.

Never had a problem with premade bottles myself. Was told all the new advice by the health visitor when DD was born last year, which I countred by saying that actually I had done some research into this and I was happier making up feeds in advance because I could add the powder when the water was 70 degrees and then cool rapidly in the fridge. After plunging into cold water first. Surely if that is how you are meant to make the bottles up to use the milk properly then the warmed cooled boiled water is never going to be hot enough.

Also health visitors told me that especially with hungry baby milks unless the water is hot enough the formula might give baby tummy ache as it isn't properly activated. Makes sense to me - after all you cook chicken etc to a certain temperature and if you reheat it in a second meal you have to make sure it is hot enough to kill bacteria!

I have tried all methods. I like the premade best. tbh I can see why the NHS released new guidance and I did wonder what nuseries were doing about this.

activated? hungry baby formula is just old-fashioned, less processed formula, takes longer to digest. there's nothign to activate.

i can see the point, though, about the 70degs if made up by a nursery. we always heat the water to over 70degs in the micro (and SHAKE, obv ) but yes, i wouldn't necessarily trust a nursery to do that. on balance if i was sending into nursery i'd probably put them in pre-made tbh.

Used to send them to nusery in a baby bottle container with an insert ice pack and they went straight into the fridge.