Is sterilizing everything necessary?
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I was wondering this same thing! What I decided to do was sterilize all things that have milk sitting in them long enough for bacteria to grow on. Example: after my baby drinks a bottle, it sits out for half a day so I would want to sterilize that. My pump parts go in the fridge after each use and at the end of the day, I move them to wash directly after being in fridge so I didn’t allow time for bacteria to grow therefore I don’t sterilize those, just wash with soap and water. I have a baby breeze bottle washing machine so it makes sterilizing my bottles easy but if I didn’t have that, I would just be rinsing the milk out of used bottles immediately after use to minimize bacteria growth.
@Monique these are really good ideas and feels way more manageable.
I use the microwave sterilizing bags and it makes it SO much more manageable! Each bag can be used 30x, so a couple packages of them will last us until 2 months when guidance says we can stop sterilizing each use. I also only sterilize my pump parts once a day
I totally understand that it is a lot to juggle! I have a sterilizer machine that I just throw everything into after washing and those are pretty reasonably affordable. And it saves a lot of stress from having to stand over boiling water! I am able to have my baby in a wrap and get the bottles into the machine just fine. They are quite expensive, but there’s also dual sterilizer/bottle washing machines. If I were to do it over again, I would invest in one of those, probably secondhand