Tis the season of distractions, overscheduling, social events and travel, but your child’s health and safety outweighs all holiday preparations.
Traveling with a toddler, even across, requires extra planning. Even after all the planning, Skipping health and safety precautions for feedings can impact your child’s wellbeing. When you need to feed your baby on the go, how you prepare their formula becomes super important for the wellbeing of your angel.
Sanitize Baby’s Bottles and Nipples
Before making up a bottle for baby, it’s a good idea to start with sterilizing the bottles and nipples. The CDC recommends always sterilizing bottles for children under 12 months, but some parents choose to continue beyond that point. If you’re traveling with your child, you can separately bag each sterilized bottle and nipple set for your visit.
Keeping Counters Clean – Whether at Home or Relative’s House
Before reusing the bottles and nipples, sterilize them again as well as the countertops where you’re working. It’s easy to overlook counter tops when you’re sterilizing everything else. It’s a good idea to at least wipe counters down with a disinfectant cloth when you stay at a hotel.
What’s In The Water You Add?
When you mix Sammy’s Milk formula for your child, consider the water you use. If you are at a relative’s house, bottled water or a filter pitcher means reliably clean water to mix formula. According to PNAS, each year, tens of millions of Americans are exposed to contaminants in their drinking water. Insider today listed the 10 cities with the worst tap water. Community Infrastructures are old, even for new housing, and it makes sense to consider testing the tap water, or filtering it. Under sink water filter units from Springwell, Hydroviv or Brita cover a large range of budgets and offer invaluable peace of mind.
While staying at someone else’s home, bottled water or a filter pitcher can add safety to mealtimes. For under $45, Brita offers a water pitcher that filters out multiple heavy metals, including 99 percent lead reduction. For less than $85 . Clearly filtered offers a pitcher that filters 99.4 to 99.9 percent of contaminants including lead. Clean water would be good for the whole family, not just baby. But no matter what formula powder you buy, if you use unfiltered tap water to mix it, you could be adding unhealthy contaminants.
Making Bottles up for Baby According to the Instructions
You might feel if you use filtered water, and sanitized bottles you’re good. As long as you follow the formula mixing instructions, you’re well on the way to protecting your baby’s formula health and safety. When using more than a single serving, as in Sammy’s Milk Stick Paks, it’s critical to follow the formula instructions fully.
While once is a great while isn’t an emergency, regularly mismeasuring could lead to health and safety issues. It wasn’t so long ago that babies were getting sick from desperate parents watering down the formula during the worst of the formula shortage. Babies became malnourished or suffered chemical imbalances. There just aren’t enough nutrients in a bottle of watered down formula. And when the formula is an over rich mixture, it’s possible your baby’s can suffer dehydration or a different chemical imbalance. Stick to the normal formula instructions and you should be fine.
Clean Hands for Clean Nutrition
Wash your hands thoroughly before handling the sterilized bottle and nipples. Clean hands and bottles for feeding offer your baby health and safety in their nutrition. Knowing you took the right steps to protect your child, allows you to relax and bond with them.
A Few More Health and Safety Tips
All babies are different. Unless your pediatrician tells you otherwise, your baby will know how much they need at each feeding. Don’t rush them; let your baby tell you when they are done and ready for a good burp. Throw away any extra formula after baby is done. Holidays are a great excuse to get together with loved ones. We hope you the holidays safely, and please reach out with any questions or comments. We love hearing from you!