Do you pre prepare bottles?

[kellyc1987]

Just wondering what you all do with regards to making bottles? Do you make each one fresh? Do you pre make them?

The midwife suggested today that I feed DS (9 days old) on demand instead of trying to stick to a schedule every 4 hours but I'm struggling with making the bottles fresh when he wakes up hungry crying and I've got to wait up to 30 mins after boiling a litre of water to mix it with the formula and then cool it down enough for him to drink..

The midwife also said not to pre make bottles and keep them in the fridge due to the bacteria building up but everybody else says that they used to do it with no problem

Also if I do make every feed fresh do I have to boil a whole kettle for 3-4 ounces of water?

Not sure what to do?!

 

[BabyHopes1974]

I premake mine for my twins for a 24 hour period. I mix in a pitcher and pour into the bottles. The formula package says you can.

 

[Rach79]

I boil kettle in the morning, fill bottles to two oz less than needed, measure out tubs of formula to use for the day. When baby wakes I top up with hot/warm water out of the kettle. I drink a lot of tea so it is generally always warm enough to heat up bottle enough for him to drink. When out and about I take a Thermos and do the same

 

[wifey2013]

Depends if you are making bottles from concentrate or powder. We're using concentrate until LO is about 4 months old. What I do is boil enough water to make 8 bottles (he drinks about 5 a day), wait for it to cool, wash and sterilize my bottles, and prepare. When I will use powder what I will do is boil my water, fill 10 bottles with how much i'll need to feed him, and keep them closed in the fridge. I'll add powder when he's ready to eat, and warm the bottles in a bowl of hot water from the sink - like we are doing now. LO will eat cool formula or warmed to room temperature. He's not too picky so I don't need to warm the bottles for too long.

 

[MindUtopia]

It's a bit different because we didn't start to FF until 3 months, but I would generally pre-make 3 in the evening, 2 nighttime ones and one for first thing in the morning. Then I'd make the daytime ones fresh usually. It's harder to judge when they are that little because if you're feeding on demand there's less of a pattern, but by about 3-4 months, you generally have a rough idea, give or take a bit, when they're likely to be hungry. So in that sense, it was easier for me to pre-boil the kettle then and I didn't find it hard to make the daytime ones fresh if we were at home (outside the house, I always used the cartons). Ideally, it's better to make them fresh as you don't run the risk of bacterial growth. And you can probably guess when your LO might be hungry. Formula is fine at room temperature for 2 hours after you make it, so even if you end up boiling the kettle and making it a little too early, as long as your LO finishes it within those 2 hours, it's probably okay. Otherwise, yes, though it's not 'ideal', I also think it's totally fine to pre-make them in small batches. If I was going to pre-make them, I would do them in the morning for the whole daytime period, cool quickly and refrigerate. Then I'd do another batch in the evening for the nighttime, so that they were never in the fridge more than about 8 hours at most. I do think most people do pre-make them, but obviously, with a very little baby, it's always good to be extra cautious when you can be. I think the key is just to make sure you make them correctly if you do pre-make them (using hot water to sterilise the formula rather than a mix of hot and cold) to reduce the chance of bacterial overgrowth.

But no, you don't have to boil a whole kettle, you just boil what you need. Just make sure to empty it out and refill with fresh water for the next time you make bottles, as you shouldn't use re-boiled water because the mineral content is too high (because some of the water has already been boiled off), which could over time screw up their electrolyte balance.