Cleaning & Sterilising

Babies are vulnerable when they're born, that's pretty much their defining feature. They're helpless; evolution has given humans the ability to spawn quite small infants, which allows us the anatomy and physiology necessary to walk upright, but it makes our offspring utterly dependant on its parents for years after birth. They come into the world understandably surprised by everything, and they've had no contact really with anything that can do them any harm while they were in the womb. And suddenly they're cast into an airy world filled with microbes and viruses and bacteria and germs and allergens and a whole host of other things which can't be seen but which have the power to overcome.

It seems a needlessly cruel irony that the one thing babies most rely on - milk - should also be one of the most dangerous materials with which they will have contact during their vulnerable first months. This guide is designed to offer a little information about cleaning your baby's bottles and sterilising the food equipment.

Cleanliness & Your Baby's Health

So first off, why is it important to keep your baby's feeding equipment clean and sterile? Well, warm milk is one of the most fertile sources of bacterial development. Your baby has not the defenses in his or her immune system to fend off such bacterial or parasitic attacks; attacks which would be dealt with quickly by adult immune systems. Your baby will eventually develop the ability to protect themselves from such microscopic miscreants by gradually coming into contact with small amounts of the bacteria. But until then, our infants must be protected. Contact with large amounts of harmful bacteria can be very dangerous.

There are a couple of strange attitudes which prevent the concerted use of equipment sterilisation; these attitudes need to be addressed to protect the health of our children. The first is the attitude 'what's the point of sterilising his or her food equipment if they spend most of their time crawling across the carpet, stuffing toys in their mouth?' People with this attitude seem to forget that the bacteria which inhabit milk curds are far more dangerous than the mites which inhabit the shag pile. The second is the attitude that 'throughout history, humanity's offspring have done just fine in the past without heavily sterilising equipment and bottles, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and a complete isolation from microbes at a young age will make you unable to resist infection as an adult'. But all you have to do is look at the historic infant mortality rates to realise that this argument is flawed; humanity's offspring have never been doing 'just fine' without sterilisation. Throughout our history, our infant mortality rates have been shocking! It's only in very recent history - since the sterilisation of baby's feeding equipment has been taken seriously - that our infant mortality rates have become anywhere near respectable. The discovery of life at a microscopic level in 1676 changed the way we care for our children, and the elimination of the majority of harmful bacteria is important to their wellbeing.

Cleaning Your Baby's Feeding Equipment

While it's virtually impossible to create a completely sterile environment in which your baby can thrive, free of the threat of infection and illness, there are a few things you can do to lower the risk of consumption of harmful microbes. Washing the items you use when you feed your baby is obviously essential, but it's not enough. Bottles and teats are the most common items used in the nursing of babies, so they need special attention. Wash them in hot soapy water, scrubbing inside and out with special attention paid to the rim of the bottle; that's where milk will collect and ferment. Invest in a bottle brush which will reach right to the end of the inside of the bottle, and a teat brush for the nipples of the bottles. Turn the teats inside out and scrub both sides. Thoroughly rinse off the soapy water, and run water through the teat to make sure the tiny hole isn't concealing any residual milk. You can use a little salt to clean latex teats, but not silicone ones.

You should check your baby's bottle regularly for scratches and other signs of wear. If it's showing any signs of deterioration then throw it away. It's just safer. The same applies to the teat, and anything else which comes into direct contact with your baby's food.

Using the dishwasher to clean your baby's bottle and other feeding equipment is fine, but it is NOT an alternative to sterilisation. By all means dishwash the equipment before sterilising it, but bear in mind that dishwashers do not generally achieve the temperatures necessary to destroy the harmful microbes which might affect your child's health. After the dishwasher has finished its cycle, you will still need to rinse the bottle of any detergent and ensure that any traces of milk or other foodstuffs have been removed. Then sterilise it.

Sterilising the Equipment

There are loads of products currently on the market which are designed to be sterilised in the microwave. We stock a lot of them on this website, in the Feeding Equipment catgory. If you don't have a great deal of time on your hands then the microwave is a really great, convenient tool for sterilising food equipment. It takes as little as 90 seconds for your bottles and other equipment to be sterilised in the microwave, and for many parents it has become an indispensable part of their nursing routine. However, metal objects obviously can't be used in the microwave and not all plastic objects are safe either.

Microwave Sterilisation

If you're going to be microwaving your feeding equipment to sterilise it, then remember to remove any lids or teats from bottles or tubs. Some teats might not be suitable for microwaving; get in touch with us before you make a purchase to make sure, or consult the manufacturer's information which came with the product. Also, if a bottle is capped in the microwave it might damage the bottle; the pressure of the heat expanding within a bottle could badly warp it.

Boiling & Steaming

Boiling is another way to sterilise your baby's food equipment; it's the more traditional way to protect your child from microbes and bacteria. To boil your bottles sterile, use a saucepan which is not used for any kind of food preparation. Buy a new saucepan if necessary, for the specific purpose of sterilising your baby's bottles. It will usually take about 10 minutes to boil sterilise a bottle, and you must make absolutely sure that there are no air bubbles trapped within the bottle while it's boiling. You also need to make sure that anything you're boiling is fully submerged for the entire time it's in the water. Boiling your equipment will make the teats wear out faster than any other method of sterilisation, so make sure you have a few in reserve.

Steam sterilising your baby's feeding kit is another effective way of making sure nothing unwanted gets into your baby's digestive system. It's the method used by hospitals to quickly and efficiently sterilise large amounts of equipment at a single time. Steaming your equipment will take around eight to twelve minutes at least, and you must make sure that it can stand up to boiling temperatures (most baby food equipment is designed for these temperatures, but it can't hurt to check).

Sterilisation Tablets

The constantly changing temperatures to which food equipment is subjected take their toll. A plastic bottle which is boiled then fridged, boiled then fridged and so on will eventually become weak and warped. You can avoid the exposure to these damaging temperatures with cold-water sterilising solutions. These solutions are often available in tablet form and are non-toxic. Put all your feeding equipment into a tub or tank of some sort, fill it with water and add the manufacturer's recommended amount of sterilising tablets, and leave it to do its thing. It can take as little as 15 minutes to sterilise your equipment using this method, but you can leave it overnight as long as you ensure everything is completely submerged. When they've been in there long enough, some brands (such as Milton) are safe enough to be used straight away, without even having to rinse. In fact, Milton's sterilisation tablets are apparently safe enough to eat! We haven't tested this though; we can't imagine they taste very nice.

Sterilisation & Immunity

Once you've sterilised your baby's bottle and teat, it's important to fill it with feed straight away. This helps to prevent contamination of the contents, especially if you put it straight back in the fridge once it's filled. Remember to wash your hands before handling sterilised feeding equipment, otherwise all your hard work could be undone.

Most parents and experts agree that the sterilisation of baby feeding equipment should continue until the baby's first birthday, because until they reach this age their immune system is unable to produce infection-fighting cells, called immunoglobins. After the first twelve months however, their immune system will begin to fight for itself. A baby's immune system is at its weakest at age six months. At this stage, he or she is no longer getting the necessary nutrients from breast milk, and they haven't yet started producing immunoglobins. This is when they are most vulnerable, and when sterilisation is the most important.