Getting ready for baby
Being a new mum brings so many questions. Find easy ways to prepare yourself, your family and your home for your newest babyaddition. We have've taken the thinking and worrying out of making sure your home is clean
Getting ready for baby
Being a new mum brings so many questions. Find easy ways to prepare yourself, your family and your home for your newest babyaddition. We have've taken the thinking and worrying out of making sure your home is clean and ready for your newest addition.
Food Safety For Your Baby
As baby grows, it's helpful to be prepared for illness, emergencies, and promoting your baby's healthy growth through immunizations.
Practicing good food hygiene to help protect your baby from food-borne illness is important. Babies and young children are particularly vulnerable to infections that can spread in food. That is because their immune systems are not developed enough to fight off disease-causing germs.
Breast milk is the best source of nutrition for babies as it provides all the nutrients a baby needs. It also contains antibodies that help to protect babies from gastroenteritis and other infections. Babies generally need no other food or drink until they are six months old.
- Always wash your hands before feeding your baby, preparing a feed or handling sterilised feeding equipment.
- Clean and disinfect work surfaces before preparing bottles or feeds for your baby.
- Take extra care to clean and disinfect your fridge regularly if you are using it to store feeds for your baby.
- Until your baby reaches one year, you need to decontaminate all their feeding equipment (e.g. bottles, teats), teething aids and (if used) dummies, between uses by cleaning them with a clean bottle-brush, detergent and hot water, rinsing them thoroughly with clean running water and then sterilising them.
- Follow the manufacturer's recommendations for cleaning and sterilising bottles before filling them with formula or expressed breast milk.
- To reduce the risk of contamination, it is best to remove items from your steriliser and prepare feeds just before your baby needs them, using freshly boiled tap water that you allow to cool for no more than 30 minutes.
- Observe ‘use-by’ dates and storage instructions on formula milk and foods.
- Always discard any milk left in a bottle at the end of a feed and any prepared formula milk that has not been used within 2 hours.
- Once you baby is trying weaning foods (usually at 6 months), do not save your baby’s leftovers. Discard any food left in the container when your baby has finished with it.
- Discard any damaged food packages or jars with chipped glass or rusty lids.
- Take extra care to clean any blenders, food processors, and utensils that will come in contact with your baby's weaning foods. Use detergent and hot water. Make sure you scrub every surface and then rinse everything thoroughly in clean (preferably hot) running water.