When did you stop sterlising bottles?

Hi everyone

I just wondered at what age you can stop sterilising bottles with teats? I have a feeling you should do it up to 1 year old.

I don't sterilise Sophie's sippy cup but it only has water in it now for during her lunch and dinner. However, I'm wondering whether to use that for our holiday and not bother with cold water sterilising which I will need to do if I take bottles with me (of course I'll clean her sippy cup with boiled bottled water, not under the tap - we're off to Spain).

Any advice on what you did would be great

I sterilised religiously up until 7mths, after that I wasn't so strict about it, Joseph was crawling and into putting his hands into his mouth and I took the attitude that there was just as many germs (if not more) on the floor as there was in his bottles. I did make sure they were washed out properly and no milk stuck in the teats. I stopped completley at 1 year.

Anything with milk in we always sterilise we find if we don't the teats degrade quicker and so its impossible to clean just with washing up liquid, we don't offer anything than milk until nearly one by which time they've stuck some gross things in their mouth anyway so everything else is just washed normally.

When Charlotte was 6 months as that was the recommended age to sterilise to, I used to sterilise all her weaning stuff too LOL, then I realised she was eating all the toys and anything else she could stick in her mouth any way!

With George I stopped when he was about 4 months but just made sure everything was washed thoroughly and in hot water. I sterilised his bottles until he was 6 months though.

I found that with all the toys going in mouths and unsterilised hands it seemed a waste of time to sterilise bottles once mine were about 6/7 months old.

12mths but only cos all the books and official advice said so

I also went up to 12months the first time around.Samuel is already nine months old so i am going to keep going until he hits 12 months also.I think for me its purely out of habit.I think do what ever you feel comfortable with hun.

i think i stopped steralising bottles at about 6 months when they were taking a cup, but then i had a dishwasher, so they got very clean anyways.

I think a year is the general advice, i used antibac spray on the high chair till both of them were old enough to sit up at the table.

i dont think you have to worry when you go abroad

if you put boiled water in the sippy cup and then put the lid on and allow it to cool it will kinda sterilise itself abit

so make sure you plan ahead as the water will need to cool before she can drink it