Bottle-feeding equipment
If you’re bottle-feeding your baby, you’ll need:
- 4-6 large bottles
- rings and caps
- several teats.
You can use any bottle your baby seems to like, because none is better than any other.
Teats are either made from latex (brown) or silicone (clear), and either kind is fine. Try teats with bigger or smaller holes until you find one that you and your baby are happy with. Teats are graded according to the age of the baby, but this isn’t based on anything scientific.
Cleaning bottle-feeding equipment
It’s important to clean bottle-feeding equipment after every feed. You need to clean it before you sterilise it, and it’s best to clean equipment straight after your baby has finished feeding.
Here’s how to clean bottle-feeding equipment:
- Wash your hands with soapy water and dry with a clean towel.
- Check teats for any cracks. Throw away any damaged teats – bacteria can grow in the cracks.
- Wash all bottle-feeding equipment in hot, soapy water.
- Use a bottle brush to scrub inside bottles and teats.
- Squirt water through teats to clear the little hole.
- Rinse everything thoroughly.
Sterilising bottle-feeding equipment
There are several ways you can sterilise your bottle-feeding equipment:
- boiling
- chemicals
- steam sterilisation
- microwave sterilisation.
When you’ve sterilised your equipment using your chosen method, you need to store the sterilised equipment in a sealed container in the fridge.
Boiling
Boiling is the simplest and most reliable way of sterilising your bottle-feeding equipment:
- Put the bottles, teats, rings and caps in a large pot.
- Fill the pot with water until everything is covered and all air bubbles are gone.
- Put the pot on the stove, bring it to the boil and boil for five minutes.
- Let everything cool in the pot until you can take it out with your hand without scalding yourself.
- Store equipment you aren’t going to use straight away in a clean, sealed container in the fridge.
- Use all equipment within 24 hours of boiling.
If you have other children, you might want to use this method when they’re asleep or out of the house to reduce the risk of scalding them.
Chemicals
You can sterilise your bottles with an antibacterial solution that comes in liquid or tablet form. This is a type of bleach that is diluted with water so it’s safe for your baby but strong enough to kill bacteria.
Here’s how to sterilise with chemicals:
- Follow the manufacturer’s instructions carefully when you make up the solution to make sure it’s the right strength.
- Wash all equipment with warm soapy water and rinse thoroughly.
- Completely submerge everything and leave it all in the solution for the recommended time before you use it again. You can leave equipment in the solution when it’s not in use.
- Remove the equipment and shake off excess solution before using, but don’t rinse it.
- You can keep the solution for 24 hours once it’s made up. After this time throw it away, thoroughly scrub the container and equipment in warm soapy water and make up some new solution.
Here’s how to be safe when you’re using sterilising chemicals:
- Store the concentrate and solution well out of the reach of children.
- Use plastic or glass equipment, including the container you use to mix the solution. The chemical solution will eventually eat away metal equipment and containers.
Steam sterilisers
Steam sterilisers are automatic units that ‘cook’ your equipment at a temperature high enough to kill bacteria.
Put your clean equipment into the unit, add water according to the manufacturer’s instructions, and switch on. The unit switches itself off when the job is done.
Microwave steam sterilisers
These are like steam sterilisers, but you put them in the microwave oven:
- Follow the instructions carefully.
- Check the microwave power needed – not all microwave ovens are the same.
- Don’t put any metal inside these sterilisers.
Never put your equipment straight into the microwave to sterilise it. This won’t work, and your equipment will melt or get damaged.