How do you make bottles?

[sarahl2691]

My baby is a week old so far we have been breastfeeding/expressing but I'd like to move on to combi feeding and introducing formula.
How do I make up bottles for when we go out for the day? It seems very Confusing! I'm a first time mum but remember my sisters baby a few years ago she'd make up a bottle with boiling water and powder an take that ready made with her.

Is this not recommended now?

You can either take hot water in a bottle and powder to add later (keep bottle in an insulated bottle bag) or take a made up bottle that has been cooled in the fridge and use that within 2 hours (room temp) or 4 hours (kept in a coolbag). Or you could take a sterilised bottle and a carton of ready made formula with you for when you need it (remember scissors to open it! )

It depends how well you stick to safety regulations regarding making up formula, really. I have a friend who just uses a bottle of cool boiled (hours and hours ago) water, but formula instructions say to add the formula to the water within half an hour of it boiling. Most places you go will be able to boil some water for you and then you just need to take a small, sterilised tub of measured-out formula and a sterilised bottle to put together. Or you can buy the ready-made cartons. Some that you buy come with sealed teats to save bringing a sterilised bottle with you, but we've found that the teat is usually never the right style for our baby. Also she personally throws up every drop of the ready-made cartons when we're out, but every baby is different.

It can be an absolute nightmare, really. And if you accidentally feed your baby from a bottle that hasn't been sterilised when you're out, it's really not going to do them any harm if it's only once in a while, so never beat yourself up about a little mistake like that.

It used to be recommended that you could cool the water & then add formula to it later but the point of using boiled water is a) to sterilise the water & b) to kill any bugs in the non sterile milk powder so using properly cooled water will not achieve b). The World Health Organisation recommends using boiled water that has not cooled beyond 70C. There are also recommendations that you shouldn't use water which has been previously boiled but I haven't managed to track down the science behind that one yet.

I make up a few bottles in advance & pop them in the fridge at the back. I have a cool bag for when we go out or take powder/sterilised bottles if we're going for longer. Making up bottles in advance is in theory not recommended but waiting for 30 mins while the water cools in accordance with the instructions while DD screams in hunger is less recommended in my opinion

I think the previously boiled thing is because boiling concentrates the various minerals/salts in water so if previously boiled and then re-boiled these concentrations would be greater, iykwim?

Oh and I did/do the same as spacefrog

I put boiled water into steralised bottles then let the water cool in them and use as i need in the house. if we are out though we now use pre made formula bottles as ds will have a full one - if we us the pre made bottles no eed to remember scissors to open them. we did the same with our DD a few years ago - no harm done to either of them.

I made up bottles before hand and kept them in the fridge. Take them out in a cool bag until needed. If I was going to be away from home for longer than 4 hours I would take powder and an empty sterile bottle and find somewhere to give me hot water.
Ds was on special formula though, if he had been on normal stuff I would have just bought premade stuff and saved myself the hassle!

Perfect prep or premade milk only. Can't get my head around other methods.

I put boiled water in to sterilised bottles in the morning, measure out the powder for each feed in to the little powder pots and then use them throughout the day. Really easy and portable. I don't re-heat them as DD is happy to drink room temperature milk: it's what she had in hospital so she doesn't know any different. I have low milk supply but am able to express enough for one bottle every 24 hours. I keep expressed milk in the fridge until there's enough and then warm the bottle to room temp by standing the bottle in a bowl of boiled water before she drinks it.

Good luck with it OP :) x

For going out I just used to pack these in my bag with how ever many bottles I needed. To keep them clean I used to wrap them in cling film after they were sterilised. Usually the DC's got used to taking the ready made formula at room temperature, if not I'd pack a Thermos of boiling water and a large plastic mug to sit the boiling water in so that the bottle could be warmed up a bit. When DC1 was a baby I had somthing like this which could be used the same way.