Room temperature formula freaking out

[concernedkay]

My baby is one week old and I've been having trouble exclusively breast feeding as my milk hasn't come in properly yet. During my healing I've had trouble getting up and sitting down so my husband has been helping me with the night feeds. I didn't really stress to him what he needed to do apart from showing him how we sterilise the bottles etc and need to freshly boil the kettle each time. I had been adding powder to boiling water and cooling it down so I thought my husband would have been doing the same.

But he had given me room temperature bottles that he mixed straight from the kettle after it had boiled a few hours before and I am freaking out. He told me he had been doing this after a few feeds I think he read the back of the formula but seemed to think the importance was the water just had to be boiled. I myself didn't know that there could be really dangerous bacteria in formula powder and now I'm so scared that my baby has been exposed to a lethal bacteria and I can't sleep about it. Has anyone made a similar mistake or know of anyone. I'm besides myself with worry.

To add some context to using Grance as an example, If you want to get into the statistics it might be worth noting that France has a higher birth rate & far more formula fed babies than the UK.
By all means follow the NHS advice- I was only offering some reassurance from another land. To add more fever they currently don’t even say you HAVE to sterilise here. Most do though but maybe that also comes into play in the stats! In any case op I really don’t think you have anything to worry about and definitely not over a few bottles in an afternoon xox

I can't believe that such an important thing as feeding newborn babies is so widely subject to differing techniques. This is the NHS guidance and is similar to what it was when I was feeding 10 years ago.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/breastfeeding-and-bottle-feeding/bottle-feeding/making-up-baby-formula/

I would have thought that it would have been standardised and taught as best practice. I wonder why it is so variable.

I would have thought that it would have been standardised and taught as best practice. I wonder why it is so variable.

I can see how parents with older children might just do what they did the first time, or people may follow their parents advice. But a pp poster said a midwife and HV said it was ok to use cold boiled water to then make formula (what’s the point in sterilising the water to then not sterilise the powder??) As you say it’s been very well known for ages that the formula itself needs to be sterilised. That just sounds like idiocy to me. How are they still in their jobs? What other dumb advice are they giving out?

But apparently a well known doctor this morning on breakfast tv told the nation that breastfed babies should have water top ups in the heat, so you know… crap advice coming from all directions, no wonder people get confused.

EV117 exactly.

@sjxoxo France is likely right on sterilising. No good evidence it reduces infant illness and I think the UK guidance hasn’t changed because they don’t think people wash up very well. They did change it for breast pump parts which no longer need to be sterilised.

I have no idea why France don’t follow global formula prep guidance though. Is it political? Isn’t Danone French? Or do they follow different guidance for vulnerable newborns (preterm, ill etc) and choose convenience over a vanishingly tiny risk for the rest of the population. It’s interesting because the guidance changed after a spate of deaths in a neonatal unit in neighbouring Belgium and France does have among the highest figures for cronobacter sakazakii deaths (and of course as we’re talking about meningitis, that must also represent a number of babies who survive but with long term difficulties that cost the state money) and those figures are high even when controlled for birth rate. Are they just such tiny numbers (and they are) that it’s not considered a priority?

I don’t know anything re formula but about breastfeeding (if you still want to bf) it takes a week really anyway , it’s a lot of colostrum for the first days and then you have to constantly try to latch them on to get bf going , it won’t work if you are supplementing with formula a lot especially at night as your baby won’t work to get milk (as bottles are easier and newborns are v v sleepy) and they will be filled up much quicker and for much longer with formula so won’t have any incentive to try and bf. Just in case you want to continue with it.

I had DS2 in 2000. Procedure then was boil water, leave for no more than 30 minutes, add powder, shake well, cool under running cold tap, refrigerate bottles you’re not using, if you’re making batches. Safe in fridge for up to 24 hours.
I had DS2 in 2008. Procedure had changed to boil water, pour into bottles, leave on side to cool. Add milk powder as and when and shake well.
I had found second procedure far easier. I wish I’d known about Evian water when in France- two holidays would have been a lot easier !

Maray1967 where did it say the procedure was to add powder to cool water in 2008?

I don’t know why it’s different but I expect there a several reasons; France has a big culture of bottled water as the tap water has differing mineral contents- everyone uses bottled water. It’s daft for us in the UK but here Evian is known as ‘babies water’! To the extent that if my DH drinks a bottle my neighbour will make a joke out of it. I think they likely do choose convenience over such minimal risk yes. Standard maternity leave in France is 16 weeks so most mums are back at work when baby is 3 months old and so formula is easier in most situations.. also there really isn’t the same stigma here over breast or bottle. I know five women who had babies same time as me and only one of them is breast only! Breast is encouraged early on at maternity unit but not for yonks like it is in the UK.Also a lot of the big baby brands are French yes so maybe there’s some politics involved- The pharmacies all sell formula and have huge baby sections and many mothers buy from the pharmacy not the supermarket. Baby boy starts nursery in sept and i have to take in packs of Evian with his name on and his milk tubs. I also think they are just a bit less ‘faffy’ for want of a better word! They would find these threads on mn quite funny and wonder what we are all freaking out about! Xx

We made up batches of bottles, quickly cooled them and stored them in the back of the fridge for upto 24hrs.

Its not the recommended way, but the recommended way is incompatible with feeding on demand as it takes 30m, and the amount of risk that you're talking about is ridiculously small.

Technically the powder could be contaminated, and using boiling water mitigates against that risk. But is the same formula, made in the same factories across Europe, and their guidelines arent as strict. Even in the uk, a lot of people (on this thread even) don't make it up with boiling water and it's incredibly rare that you even hear of a baby being ill because of it, I've never heard of a baby die.

Its not in the NHS interests to make the guidance easy for parents, or take into account convenience, because it pushes breastfeeding.

I wouldn't personally make them up with cold water, as I think it's an unnecessary risk compared to batch making, but it's probably more likely that your baby would be such by lightning, then taken seriously ill from one poorly prepared bottle.

Its not in the NHS interests to make the guidance easy for parents, or take into account convenience, because it pushes breastfeeding.

I’ve never thought about it that way before, but that makes sense to me. We didn’t even get any info about formula or even just bottle hygiene when we did the NHS ante natal session on feeding. The expectation was that you just get on with trying to BF. My LO didn’t latch until day 9 because of a tongue tie, so we had to use bottles for expressed milk and formula to top up and were clueless about both, looking for advice online - I had no idea exactly how much formula a newborn should have, I remember just reading ‘just small amounts, their stomach’s are only the size of a 50 pence piece’, well great but that doesn’t tell me how much it can hold and how often to fill it… newborn DS just wanted to sleep and seemed to have no interest in feeding so following his cues was no good. Sounds silly now, but as a brand new parent who knew nothing about babies and was told to just focus on breastfeeding and only worry about formula if it becomes necessary, too little info too late!
Maybe if the classes covered bottle feeding and formula prep properly then more people would actually follow guidelines. This bonkers procedure of pretending to expectant mothers that formula doesn’t exist does nothing to encourage longer or more breastfeeding. I breastfed because I wanted to, not because health professionals kept the ‘dirty secret’ of formula from me… its a very sad and inept attempt at influencing people. Everyone knows that formula exists. It’s a very strange and patronising game the NHS play there. Giving out sensible information about formula feeding ahead of time is not synonymous with discouraging breastfeeding.

I would sterilise the bottles, fill with boiled water, cool and then refrigerate, added powder as I used them. I never heated them either. Grandparents were horrified at them drinking cold milk and would warm them if they were ever in charge. Neither boy would drink them if warm, they were use to cold milk. In my mind (probably incorrect) heating milk, just a little would increase the chance of food poisoning.

That's how we used to make bottles when DS (17) was a baby.
Boil the kettle, stick the water in the bottle and leave it at room temperature and then add the powder when you needed a feed.
Obviously the guidance changed to eliminate the small chance of bacteria but anecdotally DS was fine and never had a tummy bug.

Probably should note the main bacteria that contaminates formula causes meningitis not stomach bugs. Salmonella also a common contaminant which does cause more typical food poisoning.

25 years ago I made up every bottle this way, a day's worth at a time. Cooled boiled water, mix in the formula, chuck them the fridge. All 3 of my kids somehow survived. Looks like I have some catching up to do when the grandkids start appearing.

This is a really useful article from an independent charity on making up formula - and it includes information on why Perfect Prep (and similar) machines aren't a good idea www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.firststepsnutrition.org/making-infant-milk-safely&ved=2ahUKEwjOg_i1gIP5AhXHtKQKHeCQB2gQFnoECAoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2HohqFQo_hk5FL02LOrqTA

Thank you everyone! My mind is more at ease now. That's really interesting about the guidelines in France, that has put it more in perspective for me in terms of the risk although any risk of something so serious is very scary.

We do have the tt prep machine but because it starts at 4oz I was just boiling the water and running under the cold for 2oz but after my husbands mistake would have been better to have used the machine. That info on the testing of the machine the previous poster sent is also interesting though and quite off-putting if it heats below 70 by the time the powder is added.

I'm really trying to persevere with breast feeding so have used formula just a couple of times since. If anyone on the thread has any tips on how to encourage more milk production I would be very grateful! Thank you x

We tested the hot water shot in our own machine and the thermometer was reading at 75

@Cuwins that's good!