Bottle Feeding

sparkle03

Lil P I think it has been mentioned already, but here is how I do my feeds for my little one, The ater is around about 70 degrees when the formula is added and every feed is made up fresh but to save my sanity I do it this way....

1 Wash and sterilise all bottles and parts

2 Boil Kettle leave for 30 mins and fill to 3oz (I am currently making 6oz bottles)

3 Put in fridge

Then when baby is ready for bottle

I fill kettle with fresh water and boil and top a 3oz bottle from the fridge to 6oz

Then add 6 scoops of powder

This means that there is no waiting around for ages letting the kettle cool for 30 mins and then running the made up bottle under the tap for it to be a suitable temperature. We all know that babies are unpredictable and when they want a feed they want a feed!

Also when I am going out I use these (for some reason I cant add a link) But google tommee tippee milk powder dispensers Its a little container that sits inside your bottle and holds the required amount of powder milk. I then just use a normal bottle made half with freshly cooled boiled water from the fridge and take a flask of hot water with me if I am not going to be able to boil water where I am going!

The guidelines do also state that if you NEED to then its ok to make a feed before you go and keep it at the back of the fridge then in an insulated holder / pocket!

Good luck and try not to stress about it, making up bottles to the new strict government guidelines was too much for one of my friends and it was the straw that broke the camels back and she had a breakdown!
Remember they are only guidelines and you know whats sensible and what isnt!

li'l_p

Sparkle03 - That's great thanks!

Yeah, as a few people have mentioned it is the whole rigmarole of when the baby sets off - we go and fetch a bottle out of the steriliser, boil the kettle, then we have to wait for the kettle to cool a bit but no more than 30 mins, pour the water into the bottle, add the scoops. We then replace the lid, shake and cool under a running tap or jug of cold water and serve.

As someone stated, it does indicate that you have to add the scoops to the slightly cooled boiled water to kill the bacteria and is as per manufacturers instructions - as opposed to being the advice of HV's or anything like that.

I know it doesn't sound much and I think we probably are getting overly stressed about taking bottles out of the steriliser and thinking they are less than sterile after 5 seconds... :rolleyes: but we are new to this so it's easy to get carried away/stressed that you are compromising the babies health.

I gave up on the steam steriliser as we seemed to have to constantly be switching it on. The instructions state that the indicator on the front show how long the contents are sterile for (i.e. 1, 2, 3 hours) and the instructins state that once the timer gets to 0, the contents must be sterilised again. Generally by the time we have put the bottles in and set it off, it counts down and then we get to the feed and the indicator is already at 0, so we have to set it off again. Once again, I may be missing the point here, but that's what we've read/understand.

Thanks for all those that added helpful comments, it is early days (...day 6) so I am sure we will start to find our feet soon and things will stop seeming so stressful and alien to us.

sparkle03

Gosh Hun, Day 6!?! Your doing amazing! It took me a couple of weeks to work out the way I am happy with doing Lexi's bottles! Well done though, those early days are super hard! x

wannabe_sybil

li'l_p - it gets easier, you will find yourself in a rhythm before you know it.

Also, I know you are sleep deprived and bewildered (normal for mums) but perhaps it is worth sitting down and working out a system that works for you. Once you get the 'and bottles in steriliser and boil the kettle and set the alarm on mobile and make up bottles' routine in your head so you can do it on auto pilot then it will be a lot easier for you and you will find out that you are surprisingly rarely caught out.

Congratulations on your little one

Janepig

Part of the problem is that many midwives and HV's are not allowed to give advice on bottle feeding as they must be seen to promote breast feeding. So that leaves alot of new mums floudering as to the best way to approach bottle feeding. When I was in hospital after having DD and I was breast feeding at that time, one of the midwives told me it would be okay for DD to have a dummy, but followed it up with "but don't tell anyone I told you that". I mean !!!!!!!!!

It was my midwife that told me to stop breast feeding as she could see it was stressing me, I'd recently lost my mother and was in a bit of a state. To ease my guilt she told me to tell everyone that she'd told me to stop, bless her. With DS I didn't even bother, straight to bottles, and as I say, although the advice had changed about making up batches of bottles, there was no way I was faffing about.

Kristaltips' says about the new advice being there to stop babies becoming ill because people have lost babies after becoming ill - I would like to know how many babies have died as a direct result of being fed from batch-made bottles. Not as a result of their houses being minging, their parents not washing their hands first, not sterilising their bottles, leaving milk out for ages before giving it to them, etc... but actually from otherwise clean and sterile bottles being made up in advance? Hmmmm. Plus I haven't checked this but I'm sure I remember at the time reading that the advice given was more about chemicals from the plastic bottles leaking into the milk? Because you can now buy bottles with no "PE" I think it's called. As I say, I haven't checked.

Jxx

PS: Sooz, please be more careful about posting replies about going up mountains and silver thimbles - I've got a chest infection and spent the next 10 minutes coughing like a loony after reading that and laughing!! Give it afew years and we will have to do that!!

sooz

Janepig wrote: »

Jxx

PS: Sooz, please be more careful about posting replies about going up mountains and silver thimbles - I've got a chest infection and spent the next 10 minutes coughing like a loony after reading that and laughing!! Give it afew years and we will have to do that!!

sorry New & old mums (& those inbetween) please either clench or find a tena lady first....is that better?

sooz

6 days!!

Get back into bed, & let the other half deal with the bottles.

sooz

I'm still breastfeeding the latest (& last) one, & not all too fussed about hygiene in general - after the first child standards slipped. Sometimes it's a washed boob, other times it's not..I shower once per day But on occasion I like to leave for my own sanity, & she then gets a bottle. If we've been too busy to pre-prepare water, the fridge with ice dispenser is a godsend. Sterilise bottle & boil water. Burn fingers fitting bottle together, & again putting hot water in. Put ice on fingers, & use other hand to put more ice into bowl, add cold water. Leave boiling bottle to sit in icy water for 1 min. Then add powder. Sit it in icy water for another 2 mins. Hope it's now not too cold, then aim at baby. But that's his job, I'm out

But buying a new fridge with ice dispenser is not very mse

emlou2009

i do the same as sparkle - i sterilise mine in the evening, fill them halfway, pop them in the fridge and top them up with fresh boiling water when i need them. saves so much hassle and screaming! but i do put the formula in beforehand. we have reflux meds to put in as well, and as he wakes starving every time, time is of the essence!! i usually find if i'm going out that if i make it up last thing before i leave the house with newly boiled water that its cooled enough by the time feeding time comes round.

once the bottle is sterilised, it can be stored in the fridge for 24 hours.

i've got a old school health visitor who told me if i wanted to make up feeds in advance its my decision to, she couldnt advise me to but what she could do was tell me she did it with her children

NBirdy

I do similar to emlou and sparkle, but a bit backwards! I have a Fisher Price flask that I fill with boiling water in the morning, allow to cool and screw top on. When a bottle is needed, I remove it from microwave steriliser, add a few ounces of freshly boiled water and formula powder - everything hot and sterile at this stage. Then top up to the correct number of ounces to match the powder, with cool water from the flask.
It just takes a couple of goes to know how much hot water you need to get the end result the right temperature. If too hot I stand the bottle (teat not attached) in a jug of cold water to help it cool quicker.