how make a feed with the flask method?

[Mumoftwox]

hi everyone, I am going out for the day for the first time with my 5 week old baby. I have bought 2 x flasks to have boiled water and cooled boiled water in. Am confused to how much boiling water to put in and how much cooled? my son is currently taking 5oz and do I need to leave the kettle for any period of time before putting it in flask? any help would be appreciated thanks

Standard advice is to add the powder to the full volume of hot water, shake thoroughly, and then cool. You could help it to cool by running it under a cold tap.
In my experience the flask never retained the full temp so I would just tip the kettle in straight after boiling. Risk of slightly too hot water for the occasional feed, as you need to cool it anyway, is less than the risk of too cold.

I would do 6 oz botttles:

2oz hot water
Add formula
Shake
Separately measure out 4oz of cooled boiled water and add to the bottle.

When you shake it you add bubbles and then it's hard to use the measure in the bottle for the cooled water being added so bring an extra bottle to use as a measure.

Tbh, I mostly used the ready made formula when out and just did the flask method rarely.

5oz will cool quite quickly. I would just make with 5oz hot water, 15 mins before you want to feed it to them.

Rather than using two flasks, I would use a bottle with a measured amount of cooled boiled water in. Otherwise when you add the boiling water to a bottle, then add formula, you won't be able to add the correct amount of cooled boiled water to it because the measurements will be raised from the powder being in the bottle so you may end up adding too little water.

What I do is take a flask of boiling water, a bottle with for example, 3oz cooled boiled water, and an empty bottle. I add 2oz boiling water to the empty bottle, add formula, then add the 3oz of cooled.

Bring just one flask of boiling hot water, make bottle enough in advance and leave to cool (or run under cold water but that’s a real faff). A feed is safe at room temperature for 2 hours so you have a large window of time to offer it and at 5 weeks, your baby will be feeding often anyway. Just don’t leave it to late as you’ll have a hungry baby and a bottle that isn’t ready.

You can also just make at home before you go if you anticipate a feed soon. With my ff one, we used to do a class at 10am. I’d make a bottle at home at 9am before we left, put it in my bag, it was ready just before 10am when she was hungry.

Also highly recommend just using pre made once your baby is drinking enough. It’s much easier and worth the expense.

I used to do the flask method. For a 5oz bottle I would:

In the morning boil at least 1litre of water. Pour some into the flask (until the flask is full, it stays hotter that way). Then pour 3oz water into a bottle (or a days worth of bottles, 3oz in each) and allow to cool.

When you need a bottle:

Pour 2oz water from the flask into an EMPTY bottle (not one with cooled water in it). Tip in 5 scoops powder, shake well. Add in the pre-measured 3oz cool water. Shake. Feed.