The Cotswold Mum Blog

You may have seen the other day that I posted that we'd broken our cold water steriliser. We took it with us to Center Parcs but when we unloaded the car on arrival it fell out when we opened the boot and cracked when it hit the pavement but you might be wondering why I still sterilise considering CK is 19 months. Well actually we have a few reasons.

We've always used cold water sterilising with the Milton method since CK was born. Even during the early days in hospital when he was readmitted to hospital due to weightloss and went on formula for the first time, his bottles were sterilised in a large cold water bucket. When we returned home we used a steriliser which my mum and dad passed onto me which they bought from Boots in the 1980s and used for both myself and my sister.

We continued to use the original steriliser for the first 19 months, and after seeing the Milton tablets in the shops I decided to go for those over the supermarket ones as the price difference seemed fairly minimal between own brand and Milton. The steriliser was so easy to use too - the water was changed daily whilst cooking the dinner and a tablet tossed in along with bottles, teat's, dummies and on one occasion even a toothbrush!

Of course then the steriliser got broken and we had to decide whether to take the opportunity to stop sterilising altogether or to replace the steriliser and carry on. We decided to go ahead and replace the steriliser.

So why buy a new steriliser?

1. Habit - we have gotten into the habit of washing the bottles and automatically putting them in the steriliser

2. Laziness and lack of space - If we don't put them in the steriliser where will we keep them and also it's easier to carry on using the steriliser.

3. Not wanting to change routine - CK still has 1 bottle a day at bedtime and drinks out of cups the remainder of the day. We only sterilise the bottles and don't want to stop giving him bottles at night time as it helps send him off to sleep.

4. Cleanliness - Bottles are harder to clean, there are crevices, nooks and crannies on bottles where bacteria can grow if milk residue is not removed, but by sterilising these this ensures the bottles are clean.

5. If we have more babies in the future we will probably use bottles with them whether they are on formula or breastfed, so it made sense to go ahead and just replace the steriliser.

Milton Cold Water Steriliser

When looking at options for replacing our steriliser there did not seem to be many cold water options and a few I looked at also came with bottles which we didn't need. Then I saw the Milton Cold Water steriliser advertised at a competitive price, and also as we used their tablets it seemed like a sensible idea to buy their steriliser as well so I went ahead and bought it.




So that's why we're still sterilising, how long did you sterilise for? Let me know in the comments below.