new to first year board

Hi ladies! My girls were just born on Monday and we came home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. I decided on bottle feeding and have been using the little ready feed bottles the hospital provided. We are running low so it's time to break out the powder. I have three children before the twins came and always (for the first month) boiled water for their bottles and washed and sterlized when I cleaned them. My pedi is a bit old school and prefers me to do this. I usually stop when the kids were a month old. But the discharge papers the hospital provided yesterday list not to sterlize bottles or nipples and just use tap or bottled water. So have things changed in the last couple years??? That is how long it's been since I have had a newborn. Just curious what everyone else does or did when they had newborns? Thanks!!!

 

Welcome to the First Year and congratulations on the birth of your twins!

We continue to boil water for formula and sterilized bottles until they were about 6 months old I think. It just puts my mind at ease doing that but I know lots of moms who did neither! Just to be safe, if I were you I would probably continue to sterilize bottles and boil water for the first few months. I am not sure what the general medical consensus is these days on boiling water/sterilizing bottles but our pedi also preferred that we do that. Have you heard of Medela microwave sterilizing bags? It was super easy and fast to sterilize bottles in them. You could also try bottles with drop-in bags too to save time. Good luck and have fun!!

 

Thanks! I was thinking the same thing. Boiling/sterlizing gives me a little peace of mind. I do have some of those microwave bags and they make the process so much faster and easier!

 

I think it depends on your water supply. We arent on well water, just city water so we never boiled water or anything. My pedi said it wasnt necessary to do this to city water. However out in the county or if you were on well water I would def sterlize.

BTW welcome to the FY!! Hang on it, its a heck of a ride

 

I agree with the pp. I think it would depend on the city water. We don't trust our water because we get notices every once in a while saying that the balance is off and a chemical is to high in it..last time it was not good which was right before the babies were born, so we bought a water filtration pitcher and filter the water and I sterilize all the bottles. I usually end up running the sterilizer twice a day and filling the pitcher once. I plan on continuing this at least through the first 6 months and maybe until a year depending on if we get any more notices from the city about our water. I think most docs will urge the city water because it contains "flouride", but I just don't want all the other contaminants that mine has!! haha..

 

Congratulations on your girls. My boys are 5 months and we still sterilise and boil the water. We have excellent water supply but it makes me feel better!!! I might consider stopping next month as they have an ever increasing amount of other items going in their mouths anyway (toys, food, hands, other siblings etc) Hope your big kids are helping you out and you're getting a few naps. Good luck

 

Congratulations on your twins!

When I first had the boys(almost 3 years ago), I bought bottled water in the beginning. Then I talked to the Dr, he asked what town we lived in, and then told us we did not have to use bottled water-nor did we have to boil it.

I would say by two months, if not earlier, I stopped the bottled water.

For Annabella, I never boiled water or used bottled. She got straight from the tap.

 

Congratulations and Welcome!!!

I still steam my bottles and nipples for I think it makes them clean up better. I stopped boiling the water around 6 months....

 

Welcome! I boiled and sterilized until the kids were about 6 months too. Our health nurse told us that we could have stopped by 4 months, but it was just habit by then

 

:welcome: to TS! Congrats on your twins :yahoo:

When I had my twins, our pedi told us that we did not need to boil the water because the water supply in this area was fine...we could do straight from the tap.

 

Mine got it straight from the tap and I just ran the bottles through the dishwasher. I am a pediatrician and I only told patients to boil or use bottled if they had well water.