Making all day Formula bottles in the morning

[chargedproton]

My friend visited me and the baby the other day. She’s got a 10 month year old.

She told me makes all her formula bottles in the morning at room temperature (so no boiling water even to kill the bacteria).
I am shocked that she doesn’t make them fresh and also that she doesn’t use hot water but just normal room temp water.

Her baby seems fine though and healthy.

Are we and the guidelines too over cautious? I just couldn’t do her practice though.

I wonder what they did in the olden days?

If DS2 is still drinking his and it's gone a little bit over the hour (especially when he was first born he often drank very slow and liked to stop and start...) then no I wouldn't chuck it, but if he'd had a big break and/or it had gone say 15/20 minutes past the hour then I'd start to feel iffy about it so I would start again. You could always make a couple of smaller bottles.

gamer - oh OK I thought it was about having the right concentration, so tap water might have too little.

newname - you always make up powdered formula with boiling/over 70C water no matter how old they are. You don't need to boil their drinking water any more though.

I always used slightly cooled boiled water, 2 bottles at a time, used one after running under cold water and chilled the other (warmed up in the microwave when needed). My MIL had DS one day and used cold boiled water as that's what she used to do when DP was a baby. DS got very sick and ended up being admitted to hospital. It may well have been a coincidence but I wouldn't take any chances.

Is her baby on prescription formula? My eldest was on Nutramigen, which has to be made with room temperature water.if I remember correctly, the can said that a made up bottle could be kept in the fridge for 24 hours.

I fed my babies back in the Dark Ages, when it was considered entirely acceptable to make up a full day’s worth of bottles, and keep them in the fridge, microwaving them when they were needed. And I didn’t always use boiling/near boiling water either - that wasn’t considered vital either. I did discard bottles a hour after warming them up, though.

I can honestly say the dses survived my parenting, and thrived.

As far as I am aware, the few incidences of fatalities caused by bacteria in formula milk powder were in infants who were ill or otherwise immune compromised, so I would assume that, in a normal healthy infant, especially one who is no longer a newborn, the immune system will take care of any bacteria that aren’t killed off by the stomach acid.

However, the guidelines are stricter now, and following them to the letter isn’t going to harm the baby at all - it may make life a bit harder for the parents, but if they are happy to take the extra load, that is an entirely reasonable decision. I might suggest relaxing the guidelines when the baby is at the age where everything goes in their mouth - why make extra work for yourself them?

Gah - then not them.

Worriedmummybekind, exactly!

It's not about once boiled, twice boiled water etc. That's not what I was talking about.

If you use a mixture of boiling water and then cold to get it to temperature, once your baby drinks tap water, the cold can just come from the tap. It doesn't need to be boiled and cooled, as they drink tap water anyway at thst age.

I bought a cheap thermos flask for my daughter and fill it every morning (or before if water isn't used and is cool) I use this for going out and about and also for at home. I just find it way easier than boiling the kettle each time and aslong as the water stays hot then no issues. I either let the bottle cool itself or use a jug of water and ice to cool and takes a few minutes. I use powder pots too for convenience

SDTG - We don't just worry about food poisoning that is bad enough to actually kill a baby though. Formula fed babies are at greater risk of infections, d&v, hospitalisations than breastfed babies. Even if it's not fatal it's still very unpleasant for a baby to experience.

I always made up batches of six bottles at a time and I never had any issues and I will do the same with my next baby

We used to make the milk two bottles in advance so we'd be warming up the one from the fridge and making the next one with just boiled water. We'd then cool it in some cold water and put in the fridge after feeding the baby. We did it like this because we used colief drops and had to add them to the milk in advance. On the rare occasion they woke and needed feeding overnight we'd use those cartons.