Is it ok to make up bottles this way?

[owltrousers]

Boil water, pour desired amount into sterilised bottles, allow to cool to room temperature. Add formula as and when a feed is needed. Shake, feed baby?

The scar on my hand can attest that the hot shot from the perfect prep is definitely hot enough

It's apparently not that it's not hot enough, is that there's not a large enough volume of the hot water in comparison to the cool water to kill all the bacteria in the formula

Norisca - my DS had significantly fewer illnesses in his first year of life than nearly all of his breastfed peers. And no allergies/intolerances.

Also, since when has this thread been about breastfeeding?

www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/micro/PIF_Bottle_en.pdf

Perfect prep without a doubt. Amazing for night feeds!

3rd child and only used it for this one, before that I did a mixture of batches and make as you go.

It is hot enough, I’ve tested it. The biggest issue was that people weren’t replacing the filters and not cleaning them regularly as recommended.

I'm amazed by this... I didn't use formula much, not until my babies were over 8 months, so maybe it's different but I think I just used cold water to make them up.

If you are supposed to make it with boiling water it would take absolutely ages to cool down wouldn't it? Baby would be screaming it's head off. When I see people using formula out and about they always just have the water already in a bottle (presumably cooled boiled), add the powder and warm it up in a mug of hot water.

So there ya go...

I totally understand why you'd want to follow the instructions on the packet exactly. But just to put it in perspective: in the US formula doesn't require boiled water. I used to make it using tap water and neither our pediatrician nor midwife commented on this being strange.

The whole boiling and cooling thing -- wow! what a lot of extra time that takes, when you have a hungry baby and it's 3am! When we were home in the UK on holidays and using UK formula, we carried on making it with tap water (even though this freaked out my British family :-S) and he was fine.

I can't imagine the formula sold in the US is so different to that in the UK -- formula is incredibly well regulated and safe, and my gut feeling is that the risk of bacteria in it is very low, especially if you sterilize bottles and keep the container tightly sealed. But also I totally understand that it would make most people in the UK uncomfortable to go against the instructions on the packet and use non-boiled water.

Isn't it amazing how the human race has survived?

Also the one-bottle formula sachets were sooo amazingly useful, especially when we were traveling. We had a stash in every bag, some in my office, a few in the car... Just so we never found ourselves caught short with the little one, at a time I wasn't there or couldn't breast feed! I can't imagine how they'd work if you had to boil and cool water every time.

As soon as you open it bacteria gets in. It's high sugar so the perfect environment for them to breed.

I used to make the bottles up fresh each time with DS1: boiled the kettle, waited 15 mins, put the water in the bottle followed by the powder and then cooled it down in a tub of cold water. Sometimes I'd stand the tub in the sink and leave the cold water running into it.

When out and about I'd take a Tommee Tippee flask, make the bottle with the hot water from the flask and fill the container part with cold water and stand the bottle in to cool.

DS2 I had a perfect prep machine - not a replacement for sterilising bottles but the shot of water is hot enough to kill the bacteria in formula. I also used the pre made formula and would use the hot water from the flask to heat it up.

I know people on here are saying that waiting for boiling and cooling is time consuming and that the baby will be screaming it's head off, but in the nicest possible way - that's a stupid excuse for not making bottles up correctly! Not knowing is one thing, but deliberately going against the guide lines is stupidity.

Perfect Preps are safe if they are used and maintained correctly. Nothing about formula feeding is recommended because it's not the preferred way by the experts. However, with that in mind, shouldn't we be following the little bit of guidance we do get??

The guidelines do change all the time, this is my knowledge from 2012 and 2015. Was doubt I'd know where to start now.

when i had my first 17 years ago, it was recommended by hv's and books to make bottles in advance, boil water into bottles then keep in fridge, add powder as needed and warm through. would make up enough for each day. did this again for 2nd born. neither had any issues. my 3rd born who is only 8 months, are using the prep machine (only as it was bought for us) again no issues..

So basically...
For night feeds and out and about can i just use boiling water from a flask, pour into bottle, add powder and leave to cool?!
Then in the day I'd use the kettle.

We use a prep machine when home. Have done since he was born and he has always been fine. I sterilise the four bottles he needs for the day the evening before and have the pre-measured pots for the formula which I fill up before bed for the following day.

When out and about I take I take out sterilised bottles filled with 6oz of cooled boiled water (he takes 9oz) and one empty sterilised bottle. I have a flask of boiling water and put 3oz in the empty bottle, add the formula, shake and then add the cooled boiled water from one of the other bottles. It’s ready to go and then the empty bottle that had cooled boiled water is still clean to be used as the next empty bottle for the next feed.

It’s much easier now he is 6 months old and only having 4 bottles a day. We were very lucky that we only had night feeds for about 10 weeks and I had the prep machine for that. You could easily utilise the out and about method upstairs though.

@lookingforthecorkscrew sorry you had that experience. They are supposed to still give advice about formula feeding too, just not promote it over breast feeding.
I got a very helpful leaflet from my antenatal classes about it and you can find the info online from nhs sources.

@twitchett22 exactly though in practice I find it easier to take a pot of formula with me and a sterilised bottle and make it up when I’m there if I’m going somewhere with a kettle, or use a ready made if I’m out for longer.
Or if she is due for a feed in the next 2 hours I make it just before I go out.
But it’s easier for me than most because my LG will drink formula cold or warm.

Having not had any children I had no idea how to make formula or that there was bacteria in it. Quite horrifying. misses point of thread

Infant formula powder isn't sterile, and milk powder is frankly the perfect breeding ground for bacteria. The only sensible way to prepare formula milk is with water at or above 70C.
Yes, AnUtterIdiot is right and this kills all of the probiotics and destroys some of the vitamins, etc that the manufacturers put in there in so they can charge us a fortune, but it's so much more important to kill the ecoli, salmonella, and other nasties that are lurking in that tin. Most infants admitted to hospital with gastrointestinal issues don't have a virus (or a milk allergy), they've got food poisoning from badly prepared, or reheated, formula.
The vitamins degrade over time anyway, like cut fruit, so the longer since it was manufactured, the less nutritious it is. Also, there are numerous studies that show the vitamin content of infant formula varies by as much as 50% across batches - infant formula is a food, not medicine, so there is no independent oversight of the manufacturing process.
It's all pretty insidious really, I've often wondered why there isn't more regulation. Or at least more information so we don't have to rely on Mumsnet for this stuff!

EllaEllaE, formula manufacturing is absolutely not well regulated, or at least no more so than say, Rasin Bran, or Jammy Dodgers.
Yes, no manufacturer is allowed to put arsenic in their Rasin Bran, but how much vitimin B, or rasins, are in there is entirely up to them. No one is checking. And it's even less regulated in the US, which is why manufacturers here in the UK must give safe preparation instructions (making it up using water at 70C) but manufacturers in the US don't.

If you decide to add hot water > formula > cool water then you NEED to measure the cool water in a separate container. If you add 2oz of hot water to a bottle then add the formula, then just fill the same bottle with cool up to the 4oz mark then the bottle won't have enough water in because of the displacement value when the powder adds volume to the water.

Add your boiling water in bottle to 1oz, put your four scoops of formula in, swirl, measure 3oz of cool in a separate bottle and then add this to the bottle with the powder in. (For a 4oz bottle). You want about a third of the water hot as half and half will still be much too hot.

So if you was making up a six ounce bottle, 2oz hot, 4oz cold. Just always measure your cool in a separate bottle before adding.

Dry powder is not a breeding ground at all. Dry powder isn't particularly bacteria friendly. The issue is that it's impossible to sterilise, which means that IF it has become contaminated, which is quite rare at the factory level but does happen, the bacteria will be present and dormant, basically.

You then open the risk of introducing new bacteria into the powder every time you open the lid, which of course is unavoidable, but in a clean kitchen it's a very small risk. But then there is the possibility for more serious contamination which could happen without even thinking - putting the lid down on a work surface where raw chicken has dripped unnoticed, for example, or a child has sneezed and not thought to clean. If you do not wash hands before preparing formula, you can shed skin cells into the tin which may have contaminant germs on them from a public bathroom, contact with other people with viruses, bugs related to raw food prep, etc. Same issue with using a scoop or knife which has not been sterilised. (In theory, if you keep the scoop in the tub, you shouldn't need to sterilise it, but you shouldn't reuse a scoop for a new tub without sterilising.)

If any moisture gets into the tub - condensation on the scoop, water in the air, spills, etc, then you have a potential small breeding ground but bacteria tend to like warm, damp conditions - not dry powder. They can live there but they won't vastly increase in number, so it is not like formula powder is some kind of crawling biohazard. It is just important to be aware that it sometimes can be contaminated, either from household sources of bacteria or, rarely, from something which happened during the manufacturing process.

The problem is once you rehydrate the powder and make it up into milk, now it's a lovely friendly environment for bacteria and they can reproduce very fast. This means that even a small amount of bacteria can become hazardous in a short space of time. That's why you don't want to let milk sit around at room temperature or warmer, but making it up with hot water gives the additional step of damaging any bacteria which are already present so that they shouldn't be able to multiply in the first place, but you'll never 100% eradicate everything - that's why milk (formula or not) will eventually go sour if you store it for too long, even if you treat it perfectly. Bacteria in themselves are not dangerous and our bodies are perfectly capable of handling them, it's when bacteria breed and increase to dangerous levels that they will make us ill.

OK that's exactly how I did it for top up feeds on the advice of the midwife and HV. Never had an ill baby, nor any issues at all. Used an electric steam steriliser.

I make all mine up the night before. Store them in the fridge and microwave to warm up. Both my babies were ok.

I also made six at a time with boiling water into steralised bottles then put in the fridge and used over 24 hours. Both babies have survived to their twenties. So much easier when you are really tired to ping it in the microwave and give it a good shake.