Myth 5 - You must boil your water before preparing your infant's bottle of formula.
This one is actually controversial. Boiling the water when preparing infant formula was universally recommended and was then thought to be unnessesary. In 1993, an outbreak of cyclosporiasis from contaminated water in Milwaukee prompted officials to again recommend that water be boiled when preparing infant formula.
If you live in a city with sanitized water and you are preparing bottles one at a time, then boiling water or sterilizing the bottles and nipples may not be necessary. You may be able to use this water out of the tap and bottles can be washed in hot soapy water or in the dishwasher. If you are not convinced that your water supply is safe or if you are using well water, then you should boil the water for five minutes before preparing formula.
However, the American Academy of Pediatrics does recommend that water that is going to be used for infant formula be boiled.
If you don't want to boil the water first, you could use 'sterile' bottled water instead. Bottled water that isn't marked sterile should probably still be boiled.
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(c) 2001 by Vincent Iannelli, M.D. (http://pediatrics.about.com), licensed to About.com, Inc. Used by permission of About.com, Inc., which can be found on the Web at www.about.com. All rights reserved.
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