Making formula

[Marnitoo]

Hi everyone!
I wondered if someone can give me some advice on making up bottles in advance. I am switching my little one from breast to formula and wanted to check that i will be doing the correct thing.
So this is how i would make up bottles in advance:
-Sterilise everything
-Boil kettle (with fresh tap water), then add the cooled water to the bottles
-Put the bottles aside with tops on until needed
-When needed add the correct amount of formula scoops
-Add a small amount of boiled water to warm it up again

On the formula packet it tells you to make up the bottle when needed and not to store but i can imagine that this is very time consuming when you have a screaming baby that is hungry! So i wanted for that reason and other personal reasons to make up bottles in advance, but in a safe way.

 

[Claire92]

ive never heard of letting the water cool before adding your scoops??
im in the uk (scotland)
i sterilise my bottles
use freshly boiled water from kettle.
add in my scoops with the correct ounce of water(while still boiling hot)
give it a good shake then leave it too cool or otherwise cool it in cold water in a pot etc or in a bowl under the running cold tap!
the boiling water kills any bacteria that the formula might form.
and as were told only to make one bottle at a time ive never done that with my first son id make 2-3 up at a time although they dont advise this now i still do it before bed for night feeds! but dont put your bottles in the fridge once cooled leave them at room temperature!!! hope this helps

 

[Diannam]

How you do yours is very similar to how I do mine. The only difference is I give mine to my baby at room temperature because he doesn't mind it. My baby does usually end up crying for a minute or two while I am adding the formula to the water, I don't like letting him cry, but I feel it is the safest and fastest way for me.

At one point I did mix the formula with cooled boiled water and refrigerate it, but my formula said it could be refrigerated for 24 hours after it was mixed. I stopped doing it that way because getting the cold bottle warm took too long.

 

[wildflower79]

I think the temp of the water is supposed to be at least 70C before you add the formula to it. The actual formula powder isn't sterile, so adding it to water 70C or above kills any bacteria.

 

[broodymrs]

You could half and half it? Half boiling water on the formula, topped up with half cooled boiled water. Or just get a perfect prep machine! They're fab for formula. I switched from breast to formula at 5 months and getting used to the milk just not being instantly availability is tricky!

 

[noon_child]

wHO guidelines on prepping formula:
https://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/micro/PIF_Bottle_en.pdf

 

[MindUtopia]

The formula should be added to the cooled (but still hot) boiled water. You actually boil the water to sterilise the formula rather than to sterilise the water. What I did was to do bottles in two sets every day, one in the morning for the day and one before bed for bedtime and overnight. Sterilise the bottles, boil water in the kettle and let cool for about 10-15 minutes, pour water in bottles, add the formula, set inside bowls of ice cold water to cool. I'd then use the one bottle I needed fresh then and put the other 2-3 in the fridge once cooled for when I needed them, then warm in a bowl of hot boiled water for a few minutes to bring to temperature. Your baby looks small now, but once my daughter was maybe 4-5 months, she tended to have a pretty good pattern to when she ate, give or take 30-60 minutes. So then it was much easier to make all the daytime bottles fresh if we were home. If she usually ate around 10-10:30am, at 9:30am, I'd boil the kettle, so the water was ready at 10am, then I'd make the bottle then and there and cool it. Even if she wasn't hungry right then, bottles are safe at room temperature for 2 hours before they need to be discarded. So she would definitely be hungry before noon and when she was that bottle was ready and waiting and would be finished before those 2 hours were up. This for me was actually easier than making and cooling the lot of them all at once every day and then re-heating, but definitely would have been hard when she was smaller and eating at less predictable times. If I had it to do again (if I FF next time), I would get a perfect prep machine. They only just came out as my daughter was getting ready to switch to cow's milk, but if you plan to FF, it's a worthy investment.

When we went out of the house, I took a closed up sterilised bottle with me and used the ready made stuff. I once spent 15 minutes trying to cool a boiling hot bottle made from hot water in a flask in the running cold sink of a pub toilet with a screaming baby in one arm and I vowed never again!