It certainly can be quite a process when you are bottle feeding your baby, there’s a lot of washing, sterilizing and mixing involved. With a little planning, or perhaps delegation to your partner, there are ways to combine the tasks and make life easier – so that you don’t have to rush and stress to do this right on feeding time.
Start a new routine, perhaps in the evening when the day has calmed down. Delegate this role to your partner.
Step 1: Wash Bottles. Use hot soapy water and a bottle brush to reach inside the bottles, teats, caps, and lids. Everything that touches milk will need to be cleaned. Rinse of bubble residue.
Step 2: Sterilise. You can sterilise with either a microwave steriliser, boil in a saucepan for 4 minutes {though don’t forget! We often get customers contacting us when they need spare parts as they melted them in a pot}. Or you can use Milton Sterilisation Tablets in a large container.
Step 3: Plan. If you want to be super organised, you can plan how many bottles your baby will drink within the next 24 hours. Babies need different volumes at different ages, and will usually feed every 3-4 hours. You will need to assess for your own child’s stage. The formula tin will also have a guide.
Step 4: Mix. After assessing how many feeds your baby will have in the 24 hour period, you can mix up formula into each bottle that you have just sterilised. Use water that has boiled in the kettle, and cooled. Seal each bottle. Store in the fridge, at the back. If your baby is only drinking a small volume such as 70 mL – which is hard to measure using the scoops – you could make up a larger batch of 200mL and split the milk into each bottle.
Step 5: Feed. When feeding time comes around, just take a prepared bottle out of the fridge and warm up. You can warm it by placing into a jug of hot water. Be sure to test the temperature on your wrist before feeding.
Step 6: Rinse. After baby has finished feeding, rinse out the bottle and teat, leave upturned on the bench. We recommend this step so that milk doesn’t dry- which is then very hard to wash off. Then Repeat to Step 1 at the end of the day when all your bottles are empty.
Step 7: Discard. This is a very important step. You will need to discard any milk that is still in the fridge. Don’t store milk for more than 24 hours. For this reason, we suggest that you understake this Bottle Mixing Routine at the same time each day.
You may also find our other articles interesting:
how to prepare a bottle of formula instantly when needed (rather than in this organized method described above)
