How do you sterilise your baby bottles?

[bells2810]

I’m expecting my first baby soon, and have been told lots of conflicting opinions on how to sterilise baby bottles by friends/family members. I bought a tommy tippee bottle sterilising machine a while ago purely because it was on offer, my mum and other family members have since said that they think it’s a waste of time/money and that they just sterilised baby bottles in the microwave.

My friend told me that she just washed her baby’s bottles in soapy hot water; then would rinse them with boiling water, no sterilising solution or anything else.

I’ve set up the TT sterilising machine and it seems easy enough, my only worry is that it says that bottles only stay sterile if you keep them in the TT steriliser for 24 hours. Obviously this is fine if I’m just at home but if I’ll be going out for the day with my baby, will this mean the bottles aren’t sterile anymore if they’re kept in the changing bag etc? I’ve been told that you should only make up feeds as and when you need them, so I’m guessing I shouldn’t take the sterile bottle(s) out of the machine, and make up as many feeds as I think I’d need while the bottles are still sterile?

I’m probably over complicating things but would appreciate any tips or advice!

How you sterilise is personal choice. Wash bottles with hot soapy water and then sterilise however you wish.
I used to take empty bottles with me on days out and it was fine.

You shouldn’t make up feeds in advance, any made up formula should only be kept 2 hours max. Buy the ready made stuff for days out.

A midwife told me we don’t actually need to sterilise if you have a healthy, full term baby as long as bottles are washed thoroughly with hot soapy water. I did though until we started weaning at 6 months.

We used milton and a milton bucket, super easy and good for 24 hours!

I use the Mam bottles which can be directly sterilised in the microwave.

For going out I just take a sterilised bottle and a carton of readymade formula (or a made up bottle if planning to feed within 2 hours). The bottles should be safe to take out for quite awhile if they were properly cleaned in the first place as dangerous bacteria mostly grow on milk residue.

I also used the mam ones that you can sterile in the microwave.. so handy if you’re out somewhere or even away for the night! It also meant you then don’t need to have all the parts taken to bits and faff about with those little tweezer things to put it back together as the mam bottles can be sterilised with the teat in it so you just screw the top and bottom on and you’re good to go. You can put an empty bottle in your bag with the lid on and it would be fine to use while out. You can make up formula bottles and take them out but only for 2 hours then you need to throw them away. You get ready made formula that saves this issue, although we never used it as it made my son sick. For a while I’d make a bottle, cool it, put it in the fridge until we were about to leave and it was then allowed to be kept in the little coolbag in my changing bag for 4 hours, just needed to sit it in a cup of boiling water to heat it before feeding. Eventually I started being confident enough to make it up on the go. I just got a hot shot of boiling water from wherever we were (or usually had some in a flask), added the formula then topped up to the amount needed with the water I’d brought with me which would already have been boiled and cooled. It actually was less hassle than trying to go by the 2 or 4 hour rules!

I would say whatever you choose to do, have a run through it all and make up trial bottles before baby arrives so you don’t end up trying to follow a YouTube video on hows to do something when you’ve got a screaming baby in the other arm 🙈 It’s really not as complicated as it seems once you start - if in doubt, just run things under boiling water and they’ll be clean enough 😂