What You Should Know About Baby Bottle Warmers and Sanitizers

It's a sad fact that today there are many pathogens that do not respond well to antibiotics. When you have a new baby, everyone wants to see him or her, causing your sweet little one to be exposed to many different types of illnesses. When you can visibly tell that someone is not well, you're right to act on your parental instinct and ask that person to not handle your baby.

However, pathogens that cause illness aren't as easily seen as someone who is ill with the flu or a head cold, and pathogens are tiny and can be found anywhere and everywhere – your floor, your kitchen sink, your cabinet's interior walls, your refrigerator, the inside of your diaper bag... and the list goes on, and on. While it may seem like a losing battle, it's important to remember that unless you have a stopping point, where all pathogens are eliminated, you will never have a truly clean bottle to start with.

Many bottle warmer reviews that you might read online are also for bottle sterilizers, simply because most devices on the market today can do both jobs. Some reviewers have stated that they received a sterilizer or battle warmer as a gift, and then never used it. These people, and their babies, are missing out on the benefits of warmers and sterilizers. There are also many different reasons to use a sterilizer or warmer – many more than there are to not use one.


Reasons Why You Should Definitely Use a Bottle Sanitizer
Using a bottle sterilizer is beneficial for large and busy families, as well as for single moms. With larger families, there are often older children in school who pick up, and bring home, all sorts of germs. While they may not become sick, washing bottles with the rest of the family's dirty dishes can give pathogens a way into your baby's bottles. Your older child might be able to fight a cold or flu virus off, but your youngest one may not be so lucky. If your child is sensitive to allergies, this is also another reason to use a bottle warmer and sanitizer.

This is also true for those single mothers who work in the health care field, or even with several other people, such as in customer service or as a cash register operator. Meeting people on a daily basis and being exposed to countless germs can bring illnesses back to your new baby. Plus, both single moms, and those with larger families, need to ensure that their baby is drinking from a clean bottle while he or she is at daycare or at the babysitter's home. Other children the same age who are being cared for at the same place where you have arranged for your baby's care while you work are most likely carrying around their own set of germs.

While a bottle sanitizer won't keep another baby from sneezing on, stealing your baby's bottle, or chewing on a toy your child plays with later, a sanitizer will certainly kill off anything that is carried home on the bottle itself. Some sanitizers are perfect for sanitizing chew toys, also, and not just bottles. When you return home from picking your baby up at the daycare or babysitter's home, you can also make sure that his or her toys are clean. It may not be possible to eliminate exposure to pathogens completely, but reducing them is always better than doing nothing.


Reasons Why You Would Want to Use a Bottle Warmer
A few bottle warmer reviews found online stated that the warmer aspect of the device they had was perfect for not only warming milk, but also for heating homemade baby food. Warmers are designed to heat baby formula or breast milk to the perfect temperature, unlike microwave ovens can, and they can do this for pureed baby food. This allows you to use leftovers kept in the refrigerator, then process them in a chopper, grinder, or other device, and then warm the food up to the appropriate temperature.

The other plus about baby bottle warmers is that these devices do not heat food up with microwaves, which kill, literally, the good qualities of breast milk. With the new advances in formulas on the market today, it's a plus, even if you are using formula, as these now contain different compounds that can be destroyed by microwaving them.

Also, with a microwave oven, hot spots are known to develop easily, and remain even after you've shaken the contents around. This is because the bottle itself is hot, and continues to heat up the milk or formula inside it, even after it feels cool to the touch. Bottle warmers won't cause this to happen, as they don't heat the contents up as high as a microwave does.

Also, most bottles sold now are PBA-free, but hand-me-downs and bottles you've saved from when your older children were babies most likely aren't PBA-free. Using a microwave for these older bottles can cause PBA to leach out faster, affecting your baby's long-term health. Bottle warmers, again, won't do this like a microwave oven does.

For older babies and very young children, instead of getting out the teapot every time you want to make them a special treat of hot cocoa, or prepare an herbal remedy of tea, you can use the bottle warmer instead. Tea, as well as hot cocoa, can be too hot for a young child or older baby, and can actually burn the soft palate of their mouth. A bottle warmer will never cause this kind of harm.


Taking Care of Your Baby Bottle Sterilizer and Bottle Warmer
While you should always adhere to the manufacturer's directions when cleaning, caring for, and using your warmer/sanitizer, here are a few basics that you should know. Every once in a while, the electrical parts should be examined. This is especially true if your device ever makes strange sounds, or you smell anything different when the device is running. Make sure the device is unplugged when examining it. Include the plug in your examinations. If the device is malfunctioning, it may not steam bottles for an adequate amount of time, leaving bottles unsterilized.

The interior, where you place the bottles and other items, should be wiped down on a regular basis. You can use a solution of baking powder and water, or one of vinegar and water. Cleansing gels should not be used. Soap or detergent can make your baby seriously ill will bouts of diarrhea if these are not completely removed. The steam will pick them up and deposit them on your baby's bottles, affecting any formula, milk, or water you pour into them. This is also true of the plastic cover, and it should also be wiped down, or rinsed with cool water and allowed to dry on a regular basis.

Wiping down, and also allowing to dry out between uses, is an important part of caring for your device, and if condensed steam is allowed to sit inside a covered bottle sterilizer, then mildew can develop. Mold is also a concern. Both of these organisms can be airborne, as both are often carried on dust particles throughout any home. You may not feel you have a mold or mildew problem, but spores can come in from outside, as well. They only need a damp place to thrive in, and once they've found one, they can quickly grow into a problem.


Taking Care of Baby's Bottles and Accessories the Correct Way Matters, Too
Pathogens don't just come from people. They also come from pets, the inside of diaper bags, the back seat of your vehicle, car seats, and anywhere else they can hide at. Many pathogens are carried on dust in the air. This is a good reason to keep your baby's bottles in an enclosed compartment, such as a cabinet, the refrigerator, or a covered baby bottle rack.

Keeping bottles from direct sunlight is also important. The sunshine you enjoy can become extremely hot in a very short time, so these should not be stored in a window, nor left in the car during the summer months. This type of dry heat can cause small cracks to form in the plastic, and these cracks can harbor not only milk and formula, but also give pathogens a place to hide, and allowing them to live even after sterilization. While this might not sound like a horrible thing, these pathogens that would be able to survive the sanitization process would be stronger, and more of a threat to your baby's health. These cracks will also cause your bottles to be more easily broken if they ever fall or are thrown by an ornery baby while sitting in a high chair.

Bottles should be cleaned with a bottle brush using warm or hot soapy water, rinsed with running water, and only then placed in the sterilizer. Bottles that are not thoroughly cleaned cannot be truly sanitary, as any leftover milk or formula can harbor germs, even after going through the sanitizing process.

Nipples should be cleaned on the outside, and then turned inside out and cleaned on the inside. Cross-cut nipples should be left inside out when placed in the sterilizer. This is to ensure that pathogens cannot hide inside the cut itself and survive the sterilizer's steam.


Sterilize Accessories Only After They've Been Cleaned
Placement of the nipples and collars for the bottles in the sterilizer is something each manufacturer should have explained in the manual. If this is not expressly stated in the manual, you have two options. You can call the manufacturer, if the number is included in the manual, or send an email, and ask if this is recommended, or if it is not. The other option is to look over the reviews you can find online and see what other parents have found out for themselves. This is important because the nature of the nipples' material can block the flow of the steam, causing the entire device to not function as well, or even lead to the device malfunctioning.

However, most likely, this is well explained, and parents have been boiling, not simply steaming, nipples and collars ever since bottles were invented. The only valid reason this might not be something the manufacturer desires is if there is no place to put the nipples and collars at the same time you are sterilizing the bottles. If this is the case, it most likely is a good idea to return the device, and exchange it for another one. There is no point in sterilizing the bottle, and not sterilizing the nipples and collars – it would negate the fact that you sterilized the bottles if the nipples were unsterilized.


Key Points to Remember
* Make sure that you only sterilize clean bottles. Sterilizers won't remove milk from bottles. The same is true for nipples and collars.
* Remember to allow the sterilizer itself to dry out on a regular basis. This prevents mold and mildew from growing.
* Remember that bottles will not remain clean unless they are also stored properly after being sterilized. Sterilizing only works for pathogens that were present before sterilizing, it does not prevent contamination from happening.
* Always keep bottles out of dry heat, including windows and cars in the summer months. Dry heat can create tiny cracks in the plastic, weakening the bottle.
* Regularly check the bottle warmer and sterilizer for signs of electrical wear, and always have the device unplugged when doing this. Strange sounds or unusual smells coming from the bottle warmer and sanitizer are signs that the device may be malfunctioning.