How long did you sterilise bottles for??

[Marzipanlover]

Just wondering how long everyone did this for or did anyone not bother with sterilising at all? The guidelines are for a year but this seems ridiculous!
Also using boiled water for mixing with formula - how long before you can use tap water??

I sterilised for 6 months or so and then just made sure I washed them in a really hot wash.

Not sure about the tap water thing though - given that after 6 months they have water in a cup with food anyway, I cant imagine it would do any harm. Having said that, I still use boiled water. No idea why - just habit I guess!

Stopped sterilizing at 3 months, just used hot, soapy water.

I did until 11 months when DS stopped taking a bottle, sterilised everything though not just bottles.

I've never bothered with sterilising although I did ebf for the first 3 months so nothing to sterilise. They put all kinds of things in their mouth anyway - especially now that DS1 is shoving things into DS2's mouth showing DS 2 all kinds of interesting things!

I stopped sterilising at about 11 months or so and started washing bottles and utensils in the dishwasher or in soapy hot water.

My daughter has been drinking tap water since she was 12 months.

Not sure about the question re: formula as you should make up powdered formula with hot water anyway and you wouldn't want to use water from the hot tap for that, or am I misunderstanding you?

As a HV I am supposed to advise a year which is utterly ridiculous given that most babies are happily sucking the handle of the Tesco trolley by 8 months or so! And they usually crawl before a year too (most inconvenient) - all over the place and on a variety of unsterilised surfaces.

I sterilised until my son crawled (six months) after which I didn't bother any further.

There is of course the school of throught that the rise in allergies etc is due to our obsession with cleanliness and small babies are just not getting the exposure to build up defences.

I sterilised the bottles until 15 months when they stopped having them. I must admit I didn't sterilise anything else and yes, they were crawling and so exposed to other germs but I think bottle teats and bottles themselves are pretty difficult to clean properly, and milk is quite a nasty thing if you don't get the bottles really clean...so that was my reasoning behind it. Both children were off bottles by 15 months and that is when I threw the steriliser out!

Marzipan- you always have to use the boiled water cooled for no more than 20 minutes because it's to do with the formula powder not being sterile, nothing to do with the water. The heat kills any bacteria that could be in the Milk.

I've known a couple of people not sterilise at all because they use the dishwasher to wash the bottles.

A year. Heaven knows why as they were crawling round the garden long before then.

For 14 weeks I sterilised bottles before each feed. For the next month or so I sterilised them in the morning and if I used the same bottle more than once in a day, I'd wash with hot soapy water before each use. That was the advice given with my electric breast pump so I figured I may as well treat the bottles the same way. After that, I stashed the dratted steriliser away.

By that point, I was using sippy cups and bowls and such that weren't going in the steriliser, and baby was putting anything and everything in her mouth anyway.

I always use pre-boiled water for mixing formula, which I started using at 14 weeks when my milk stopped, but I don't worry about how long it's been cooled for. Nothing else my daughter eats is sterile so my (possibly misinformed) opinion is that the formula manufacturers are being over-cautious. I have never given her tap water to drink without boiling it first (she's 8 months old). I'm not sure why exactly - perhaps it's just habit at this stage!

I stopped sterilising at 6 months when I found DS had started crawling and was eating the cat food! I figured that if he could survive that he could survive without the sterilising! I always used pre-boiled water for the bottles.

As above, my DD crawled over to the kitchen bin, licked it, then I removed the steriliser!

The formula manufacturers are not being over cautious. It is never OK to make formula with water less than 70C.
Formula can be contimated during manufacture and may contain dangerous levels of Enterobacter sakazakii and Salmonella enterica. The only way to ensure that these bacteria are reduced to safe levels is to make the formula using water that is hotter than 70C.

See WHO Guidelines for more information. The likelihood of infection is rare but the severity of these infections can be deadly.

Its fine to give non boiled water for a drink after 6 months though.

The day I saw DD shove a clump of soil in her mouth, followed swiftly by a snail shell. About 6 months I guess. Washed them in dishwasher instead.

Thanks, I wasn't aware about the boiling water and formula!

I was probably a bit over cautious. I sterilised everything until she was around a year old. She didn't have tap water ever, it wasn't safe and nothing I did prevented her getting dysentry twice before she was 9 mnths old.
She is a healthy nearly 10 YO now.

I breastfeed him and I sterilised the pump and bottles a few times as someone had bought a steriliser as a gift for us til I thought one day hang on this is a complete waste of time - the items are CLEAN. Then I chucked the steriliser.

I never did. DD was bf, though, so didn't have that many bottles. She did drink from the cup from 6 mo.

Hot soapy water/dishwasher.

Re: bacteria in formula- yes, if you leave the prepared feed in a room temperature for ages or if you don't wash them up properly. But seriously, a bottle brush with the end for the tit, washing up liquid and hot water will be enough.

Until I realised that my nipples weren't sterile.

Hot soapy water/dishwasher fine.

Our LO wouldn't take a bottle after about 8 weeks - she just stopped taking the expressed milk in a bottle so has been EBF since then until she started BLW so we now offer her a drink of water at meal times in a doidy cup (plastic slanted cup with no spout) and we don't sterilise that. I think once she started eating, (and grabbing other things to put in her mouth) it seemed silly to sterilise anything as food isn't sterile!