excuse me but is that sterile? #motivational monday
A little while ago a friend of mine posted a question on facebook asking for some advice on how long you should sterilise baby bottles and feeding equipment. She had numerous responses, those sort of questions do on facebook don’t they? I thought id ask the lovely parent bloggers on twitter what they would all do or had done and they all said about 12 months or until the baby could move around and pick stuff up.
My response went down with a little bit of a shock for some people. See, after our first baby we didn’t sterilise anything. AT ALL.
My babies have all been breastfed but we have always given bottles as well, usually of expressed milk or formula. Generally once a day in order to give me a bit of rest. My OH would do the late evening feed with a bottle and then mama would be getting a little bit extra kip and do the night time feeds, which (chipping into baby nurse mode) is always one of the best feeds to stick with as your hormone levels are higher at this time of day (which..ahem is sort of unfair if you ask me).
But thats digressing..
….so we usually would only have one or two bottles a day and the hand breast pump to use daily.
At the end of the day all of the things were washed in hot soapy water with a bottle brush and then put in the dishwasher…and thats what we did…with every single baby.
Now I realise that, that might sound radical and scary to some who are worried about bacteria, infections, high temps BUT we didnt make the decision to do this based on entirely no thought.
If you have been here before you may know that I have been a staff nurse on a large Neonatal unit for a number of years (thats sick and premature babies) and for our pre-term babies who aren’t old enough to suckle we ask their mama’s to express milk for them, which is stored and given to them as they need it.
We dont sterilise the expressing sets we give to the mums. They are taught good hand washing and how to wash the sets effectively with detergent. But that is all. This process has always been sanctioned by a micro-biologist (just in case you wanted to know!). Also I donated expressed milk to our local milk bank ( just call me Daisy) and they also did not recommend sterilising. Again just hot soapy water and a thorough clean.That milk is obviously pasteurised before it is used but it is screened for bugs before that process.
This reason and also a conversation i had with a friend who is a phd in microbiology who said something along the lines of ‘it is totally laughable that ten minutes in a steamer can be deemed as sterilised!’ made me re-evaluate why we were actually sterilising our stuff.
So we stopped and got a little bit of time back, which is really important in our house and we have had 5 very healthy, thriving babies. Four of which have never had anything that has been sterilised.
Thats my theory, i wouldn’t have said it was that radical, i think the response i got on facebook seemed to suggest that it was maybe a little. Im not saying that we shouldn’t recommend that parents sterilise for young babies but its important to realise that a steriliser doesn’t actually ‘clean’ a bottle!
Funnily enough though a friend of mine who has moved to Australia chipped to the little conversation on fb saying that there they don’t recommend sterilising either. So it would seem that im not altogether alone…
🙂
What do you think? what did you do? What will you do?
and just because here is a seriously cute little babba…
GIVEAWAY TIME!!
This week as its a baby theme I am doing a giveaway of one of these fabulous Lamaze developmental play toys. We had one of these for my last baby and she loved it. So if you would like to win one of these cute little toys for your little one, please fill in the rafflecopter and away you go!
the winner of the fabulous Cakedays book by the Hummingbird bakery is Gemma from Helloitsgemma. Congratulations! Give me a shout!
in your eyes #motivationalmonday
My second daughter wears glasses. She was diagnosed with astigmatism just before the end of her reception year in school. It was picked up through a routine school nurse check that happened at the beginning of the year. I have no idea why it took the best part of a year to find out but then there’s nothing like the slow turning wheels of the NHS. 😉
Anyhow she had to be referred for tests at the local children hospital and I obviously went with her this time, whereas the school checks had been done without either me or her dad present. The initial test, reading the shapes, with both her eyes uncovered she rocked it..all the way down to the little house, square and circle..even i struggled to make them out.
Then the nurse covered what we now know as her unaffected eye and i watched her struggle with the first couple of lines and then give up. I felt gutted for her, gutted that she couldn’t see, gutted that we hadn’t noticed and gutted what this meant for her in the future.
I remember spluttering my excuses out to the nurse, ‘we have never noticed anything!’ “she doesn’t ever do anything that would make you think she can’t see!’ To which, the nurse, probably well used to this sort of pleading parental guilt coming her way just smiled at me and said ‘ wait and see what the Doctor says’
It turned out that her vision in one eye is so good that she was totally over-compensating with that eye and so that is why we had noticed nothing. *phew* 😉
She now wears glasses all the time and she has been incredible about wearing them, which given the sort of um…..independent character she has….is pretty remarkable that she has toed the line. But her eyes, with her glasses on, now have the same ability and she can read all the way down to the tiniest symbols with both eyes.
Her older sister was pretty jealous of her glasses and wanted to see if she needed them too…she even has a pair of fashion ones and i think, still yearns after the pretty glasses her sister has. We even had quite a lot of pouting and ‘its NOT FAIR!” type comments from her when her sister first got the glasses. Last week on half term we were talking about my niece who doesn’t need glasses but is wearing fashion ones all the time and my daughter who doesn’t wear glasses was nodding in agreement with how lovely they are and pretty and trendy…etc etc..
So I asked my daughter who wears glasses ‘do you think wearing glasses is fun?’
she thought for a while and said ‘No because i have to be careful and not break them and i loose them all the time and people can hurt me if they bump into me!’
Funny how just a little different perspective can change your attitude…
isnt it?
i have another LUSH product box to giveaway this week! Just follow the rafflecopter below. Last weeks winner was Cheryll Hastie! Congratulations please contact me!
Oh its a jolly holiday…
The winter makes me wish for a holiday. Especially this month. February is a difficult month i think as the weather seems to never know what to do. We have had warm, sunny days when the daffodils are out and acting all spring like and then its baltic freezing winds that cut through you like a knife. I can just do without it.
So i start thinking holidays….hmmmm…warm…sunshine, flip flops, vest tops and that lingering smell of suncream.
This time of year we start talking about our holiday plans..holidaying with 5 kids isnt exactly easy or cheap but its nice to get away and try and have a break..(although break isnt always how it feels!). For me, its a balancing act. We need to keep it within a reasonable budget but sitting on a beach in summer wearing your jumper and a rain mac is not my idea of a summer break. Which largely rules out this country. I know that the kids don’t need the heat though, they just dont feel the cold in the same way. But then they aren’t spending two hours paddling, ankle deep in an outdoor pool with a swift breeze blowing round your swimming costumed self.
Opt for outside this country and you are looking a LONG drive or flying and that just bumps up your price. Oh yeah you can fly on those super cheap fares but we ALL know that they never stay super cheap. Adding taxes for standing in the airport, food on the plane even going to the loo on the plane. It all gets pretty steep!!
So what do you do and where do you go? What has worked well for you and your family in the past or where are you planning this year?
This week I am lucky enough to have another LUSH cosmetics giveaway.
The winner of last weeks treat box from the lovely LUSH is: Anna Emslie. Congratulations! Please get in touch!
So this week it is another box of their shiny, happy goodness could be winging its way to you, maybe as a little mother’s day gift or just a treat. Just fill in the rafflecopter below!. Thanks so much and don’t forget to check out the lovely ladies I am linking up with this week!
light at the end of the tunnel…
If you are like me then sometimes the winters seem really long and bleak and dreary. The thing with our winters here is that they are so…well…grey.
It is not often that we get the sunshine and blue skies with the low temperatures that frequent the alpine regions in Europe. Which is a real shame…
We get lots of long, grey d-r-i-z-z-l-e. I know that folk love the cuddling up under the blankets and watching a movie..but really there is only so long that, that is attractive and actually the longing for the sun..the warmth..gets to be a somewhat of a yearning.
Sometimes you only realise how much you need it when you feel the sun on your face, like your very soul is waking up and you suddenly feel like crying with relief. The light is coming back…its not so dark, not so cold and there is less of the huge struggle to get everyone dressed like a eskimo to actually step outside the door. I miss the sun. I love the sun.
I love snow, really i do….but i love it when combined with blue sky mountain days, ski lifts, big warm jacuzzis for apres ski and the sun. I love it with the sun. Which i guess is only possible when you are high up in the mountains. Here it is slush and the school run. Absolutely no fun!
So that light at the end of the tunnel. I think this week it got a bit closer 🙂
My giveaway this week is from one of my favourite shops..the shop you can smell from down the street! A gift box from the fabulous Lush handmade cosmetics. A little bit of sunshine in a box. Simple to enter just follow the rafflecopters!
Check back next week for the results.
Last weeks winner was Hannah Deane! Congratulations.