Do I need to sterilize?

Thought of sharing this piece of info with everyone.

Question:
My son is turning 1 year old in less than one week time. I am wondering if I still need to sterilize my pump equipments and bottles. At times I may store the fresh milk up to 5 days before consumption. If I don't sterilize, would the breast milk spoil easier?Hope you can advice.

Answer:
Generally, when baby turns 6 months old, there is no need to sterilize the pump parts and bottles anymore since he would have started on solid food and we do not sterilize the spoon and bowl too. However, if you prefer to be safe about it, you can sterilize the items once a day. Other times, simply wash with water and detergent.

Not sterilizing will not cause expressed breast milk (ebm) to be spoiled more easier. However, recommended guidelines suggest up to 48 hours for storage in fridge and up to 3 months if you freeze the ebm. If you store your ebm in the fridge for up to 5 days before consumption, you may wish to check that it's not spoilt before you give the milk to baby.

Question:
Thank you for reminding me on checking the fresh milk. I believe we can detect the spoilt milk by smelling it?

Yes, my ebm spoilt once (I did an experiment to test the cooling efficiency of a cooler bag)...it looked and smelled really disgusting, didn't have to taste to figure out that it's spoilt. Some would prefer tasting it to be 100% sure they were really okay.

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