How do you make up bottles?

[Madallie]

Is there any way to safely make up bottles other than just as they are needed? It seems like, as I understand it, this involves boiling water and then leaving it to cool to a certain temp then making bottles. Can they not be made in advance? I know my mum did this but am aware advice has changed.

These are the official guidelines for making bottles of formula milk.

The easiest (though costly) way round this is to buy ready made cartons.

One way to make and cool a bottle quickly is to keep some cooled boiled water in a sterilised bottle in the fridge (fresh each 24hrs) Make up the bottle when you need it with half the amount of freshly boiled water and, after shaking well with the formula, then add the cooled water - so for a 120ml bottle, 60ml of boiled water and 60ml of cooled. Check the temperature as it may need to be cooled a little more before feeding to baby.

As a professional I cannot do this (and shouldn't advise it) but you can make up a bottle, cool it quickly and store it in the coldest part of the fridge (ie. not the door) and use it within 24hours. Back in the 80's when I had my dc we used to make and store a whole days feeds.

The most important part of the bottle making process is to add boiled water above 70 degrees to the formula powder as the powder is not sterile and the water needs to be 70 or above to kill any bugs. A full kettle of water that has just been boiled will stay above 70 for up to 30 minutes. Remember that smaller quantities of water will cool quicker.

Thank you. Just a question, why do current guidelines say boil water and leave for 30mins before adding powder? Would it not be better to add to freshly boiled water because of killing bacteria?

Advice is to leave for up to 30 minutes - so you can make the bottle sooner than this with water that is hotter than 70 degrees. Safety wise for yourself it is probably good practise to leave the kettle to cool for 10 minutes in case you get a spurting bottle! Like when you haven't quite screwed the lid on correctly. Over the years I have learnt to hold the bottle within a tea towel when I shake

I know this goes against all the rules, to recommend this, but seriously no one actually follows those guideles do they?
People boil water, put in bottle. Leave to cool. Add formula, shake.

How do you explain that people need bottles warmed in cafés,?
Because everyone I have ever known fills up water. Buys one if those mothercare storage things that stores enough for 4 feeds or whatever, and adds it to cold water.
And millions if babies don't die / aren't poisoned, are they?

Millions of babies don't die from incorrectly made up bottles but some do. And lots more get upset stomachs. It's an easily preventable risk so why take it?

The easiest thing is jug of cooled boiled water in the fridge to top up boiling water feeds IME. And cartons for when out and about.

I make my bottles with boiled water straight from kettle the scoops if formula, give it a shake over the sink to mixing so that the hot milk scooshes into the sink .
I don't let the water cool for 30 mins
I also make up a few feeds at a time
Currently have two bottles on bedside table to do me through the night feeds tonight
Never had any problems doing it like this with two kids

then scoops of formula
3am predictive text !!

With dc 1 whos only 7, i used to make up a days worth of bottles (water and formula pre mixed) and store ready to warm in fridge as was never told otherwise.

With dc 2 (now 3) i made up bottles of boiled water which i kept in fridge then rewarmed slightly in microwave and added formula as needed.

I cant imagine making every indiviual bottle from scratch eah time as its so timely.
Now on c3 and had planned to do same as dc 2.

Have to admit dc 1 did get alot of upset tummies in first year or 2 of life whereas dc2 hardly had any. In hindsight i dont know if this is coincidence or not but its not somthing i would like to chance again.

With no.1 we followed the the directions on the formula to the letter,after a while, it was 'sod this', boiled the water, made a few bottles with with formula, put straight into fridge, and re warmed in the microwave as my son hates room temp milk, even now at nearly 2 years old. With no. 2, we will not be faffing around with it again, and doing excatly the same, make bottles straight away, store in fridge and re heat in microwave.

I'm watching this thread with interest as despite what the guidelines advise I refuse to believe that at 3am when a baby is screaming for milk a parent will boil the kettle, wait 30 minutes for it to cool and then add the formula and give to the baby. Surely at 3am you want a bottle as soon as the baby's tears start?! I'm really liking the idea about keeping cool boiled water in the fridge and mixing it with boiled water to achieve a lovely warm drink. I take it the cool water goes in though after the formula has been added to and mixed with the boiling water?

One thing that confuses me though is that obviously the scoop of powders adds to the drink volume so even if you have 3 ounces of water Already in a bottle by the time you add your 3 scoops it reads more like 4 ounces on the scale. So do you say the baby has had 3 or 4 ounces of milk??

The important thing is, with volumes, that you've used the right amount of water with the right number of scoops. How much, exactly, your child has had isn't important so long as they are gaining weight and doing lots of wet nappies. Breasts don't have a graduated scale on them so you never know how much an EBF baby has had. Try not to worry too much about precise volumes

I made up four at a time (with hot water) chilled and then refridgerated. DD fed three hourly, so.Id take.one out of the fridge an hour before needed so she had it at room.temp.

Shes never had a warm bottle.

Did you get up in the night an hour before each feed to in order to take one out the fridge too? Did you manage to fall back to sleep again or did you then just sit up and wait for your baby to wake for it's feed? It just sounds so tiring.....

I've got no input into mixing method as have never done it, but I would never ever heat a bottle in the microwave. It's uneven heat so you will always get little pockets that a much much hotter than others and could scald baby.

The thing that makes it more difficult IMO is that you are not meant to mix boiling water and formula, because IIRC the boiling water kills off some of the vitamins in the formula.

I used two methods myself, 1 was to make up bottles containing just boiled water, filled to the exact level that I needed. I cooled them very fast, they would be in the fridge 20 minuets after the kettle was boiled. When I needed a bottle I added the formula at that point and heat the bottle up to a drinking temperature (some babies will drink it cold from the fridge, but mine never seem too). All of the bottles of water needed to be used or thrown away after 24 hours.

Another way I would do it would be as above, but filling the bottle with half the amount of boiled water that I needed. I would boil a kettle at the time of the feed, top up the bottle to the level needed and then add the formula.

I personally don't like making up bottles of milk and cooling them because if I go out I use a carton of made up formula. If I make up a days worth of bottles using formula, and then go out unexpectedly I won't use up all of the feeds in the fridge and end up throwing milk away.

I'm sure my way is not ideal, but really, faffing about for 30 minuets while you have a baby screaming for a feed is horrendous (especially with other DC's to look after). Obviously on a good day you can see your baby waking for a feed and have in ready before they cry, but often they take you by surprise and need a feed NOW!!

Best and safest is to make each bottle fresh, or to use cartons.

If that's not practical, made up bottles should be cooled rapidly and stored at the back of the fridge until needed.

Never make up cold feeds with cold, previously boiled water - it's the hot water that kills potential contaminants in the milk powder. You boil the water to sterilise the milk powder not the water.

So, say for example you wanted a 4 ounce feed, would you mix 4 scoops of formula into 2oz of freshly boiled water (to kill off the bacteria) and then top up with another 2oz of cooled water?

Or do you straight away mix 2oz of boiled water to 2oz of cooled water and then add the 4 scoops of formula afterwards?

You would add all the formula to the 2oz of boiling water, then top it up with 2oz of cooled boiled water.

As to boiling water killing nutrients, I've not seen any evidence of that, the WHO just states that the temp should be at least 70 degrees - I think the recommendation to let the water cool slightly is to reduce the risk of scalding.

Id feed it cold straight out of the fridge. Mind, that was only the 3am feed as I was up for the 10pm. one.

She dropped the 3am at eight weeks.

I did the following for all three:

Steralise bottles...keep ready next to microwave. Boil water and pour to amount needed eg 6oz. When feed needed add the formula so 6 scoops. Shake and pop in microwave until correct temp. Shake again to avoid hotspots in the milk and feed easy peasy!!!!

It might be easy peasy to do it that way lucyfluff (and I did it that way myself when DS was a baby) but it's not what the NHS recommends now. They come up with these guidelines for a reason, it's based on research and aimed at protecting babies from serious illness. The formula needs to mixed with hot water above 70 degrees to kill harmful bacteria.

Writer - If you are using the 'half hot, half cold' method of making up bottles, you measure the water separately.As you say, you can't just use the lines on the bottle. So measure X amount of very hot water, add formula, add pre-measured boiled-and-cooled water.

You don't mix the hot and cold water together first. The whole point is that the powder mixes with hot water to kill any bugs in the powder.

Although the current NHS advise is not to make up bottles in advance, the WHO are ok with it. Make up as per instructions, flash cool and keep in the coolest part of the fridge. Can then be fed to the baby directly or heated up first depending on his/her preference. The same can be done to take a bottle out with you by keeping it in a chilled insulated bag (though not as cold, so only for a couple of hours). That is what most people I know do overnight - bottle ready to go in fridge. I even know one couple who had a bottle warmer and one of those mini-fridges upstairs!!

What used to be advised and which is not safe, is to boil the water, cool it, keep in fridge, then add powder and re-heat. The whole point is that bugs are actually just as likely in the powder as the water. So boiling and cooling the water addresses one risk, but not the other one. Powder must meet water of at least 70 degrees at some point in teh process.

I was unaware of those new guidelines re adding formula to a certain temp water...when did they come in??

Grrr damn research and the new 'rules' to follow!!!!

Lucy they came in a few years ago after some babies caught something nasty (salmonella or e-coli I think it was?) in France and died due to the powder being added to cold water; as there is no way to sterilise powdered formula other than adding it to water at +70 degrees.

The water isn't the issue, the powdered formula is. Advice is to ideally make up feeds as required, or if not possible then make them up, cool quickly and store in the back of the fridge.

Easiest option for overnight is the ready made cartons - also saves a trip downstairs as you can just keep the carton and bottle by the bed, and pour into bottle when baby wakes :)

Oh good god, this is all so confusing!

Ds was born 11 years ago. I used to make up 6 bottles at a time, with just boiled water, stuck them in a sink of cold water to cool for 20 mins the put in the fridge. He'd either have them straight out the fridge or I'd plonk them in a pot of boiling water for 5 mins.

The only reason I made them with boiling water then though was because he was on a special, thicker milk which had to be made with boiling water in order to thicken properly. I remember everyone else had a jug of cooled, boiled water in the fridge for 24 hours which they would measure I to a bottle and add the powder to.

He was in scbu for three weeks and this is how they did it there too, either a jug of cooled water or boiling and cooling for special milks.

Hoping to breastfeed this time, but if I can't manage it (again) the. I was planning on doing the bottles the way I did with ds.

How is it feasable to make a fresh feed each time with a starving, angry baby, especially in the middle of the night?