Readymade formula instead of powdered

[crumble797]

I had a very long and difficult birth and am now in the process of slowly recovering. I wasn’t able to breastfeed sadly and have been feeding my baby with the ready-made bottles of Aptamil formula. I know it’s a more expensive option than the powder, but I’m so tired and can’t face faffing around preparing the powdered formula at the moment.

Is it ok to feed baby (who’s now six weeks old) on readymade formula only or is the powdered stuff better for them?

DD has been fine until now, but during the last few days she’s started screaming halfway through her feed and doing huge burps when winded. She was drinking loads of milk last week but is taking smaller quantities this week. Could that be down to the heat and/or a growth spurt?

Also, when do babies’ digestive systems mature a bit and start to handle milk better? I hate seeing DD in distress during her feed and then straining to pass wind and poo!

mThe 70 degrees does actually have a reason - if you use water that's too hot you denature the proteins in the milk and change its nutritional content. 70 degrees is a compromise - ideally you want the water as hot as possible to kill the bugs, but you don't want to mess up the nutritional properties of the milk by doing so.*

Sorry but I’ve only ever heard this said before by armchair scientists on MN - when I google it there’s no information on this anywhere. I think if this were the case and using water that was too hot would cause some form of nutritional deficiency in babies then this information would be easier to find. A lot of advice will say ‘no cooler than 70 degrees’, implying you can use hotter water. I think it’s also for practicality - if you just boiled the kettle for a cup of tea in the last 20 mins you don’t need to boil fresh water, it’s good to know its still hot enough to use.

A quick dig around on google scholar reveals:

The initial source of the "dentaturing theory" may well have been a marketing scam from Nestle - heating above 40 degrees removed a lactobacillus they were incorporating, but there was no evidence it actually did any good in terms of infant nutrition, and the insistence of not heating above 40 degrees was certainly bad from a hygiene point of view.
www.cmaj.ca/content/181/3-4/E46.short

One reason for the 70 degree choice is that it's fairly likely to be "hot enough."
europepmc.org/article/med/19602857

Or maybe it isn't...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6155361/
Summary - 85 degrees would be better for removing bacteria, but more work into impacts on nutritional value required (a "we don't know and we're playing it safe" rider, or a "we really ought to check" rider?)

So is there any evidence that greater than 70 degrees is bad for the nutritional content?

Autoclaving (105 degrees) does get the milk too hot and changes the nutritional content (reduces free amino acid content).
www.nature.com/articles/1602279

As for where exactly the cut off between "still nutritionally okay" and "we've lost some of the free amino acids" lies on the temperature range between 70 and 105, I haven't managed to find a definitive answer.

One thing hopefully we can agree on is (a) OP is fine using ready-made (it's just more expensive) and (b) do not feed your child formula made up with cold water - that's really, really unsafe.

(Since you ask, my armchair scientific credentials include a PhD in polymer science - protein folding wasn't directly my thing, but I did learn a bit about it in passing).

It’s exhausting worrying whether or not I’m doing the best for my baby. There seem to be so many opinions either way and I don’t have time to spend hours researching formula. Argh!

@crumble797 all formula has to conform to UK regulations (assuming you're in the UK), so the difference in them is negligable.

One thing ive learnt in my very short period of parenting a baby is that there is a million different ways to do things. You just have to stick what works for you guys. I think there will always be people that tell you you're doing it wrong, or you really should be doing their way, but unless its something your interested in trying id stick with your way.

crumble - what Letsall just said is spot on. Formula is so tightly regulated that in nutritional terms there's nothing to choose between them. I stuck with SMA simply because that's what DS got in hospital (tube fed because low birthweight, with my tiny, tiny amount of colostrum added in a syringe!) It worked fine. He's a strapping 12 year old now.

And I used ready-made throughout. Cost a blooming fortune, but I was lucky to be on a reasonably good maternity package, and it was worth it for peace of mind (knowing it was exactly right and sterile) and convenience (knowing that when he started to cry I could have the bottle ready in about 30 seconds).

Above all - DON'T PANIC. Feeding your baby is one of the most emotionally loaded parts of early motherhood, but it will all be fine, honestly.

Thank you for your kind words @Letsallscreamatthesistene and @CaraDune x

Hi what Do you use instead of tap water for baby formula