The water to prepare the bottle has always been boiled. The tap water was taken in a saucepan that was boiled, removed from the heat, after a while it was thrown into the bottle, mixed with the powder of the formula and cooled slightly with water to give it to the baby.
What has changed now is that most fathers and mothers have replaced tap water with bottled water, which provides more security for the baby and what should theoretically be something positive is becoming a risk because many parents believe that, because they use bottle water, they don't need to boil it and this is a mistake: the water to prepare the bottle you have to boil it yes or yes.
The problem is not water, but dust
In the past water boiled for two reasons: to remove microorganisms from water and to eliminate microorganisms from artificial milk. However, people did not believe that he was doing the latter, but believed that he was doing it only for the first reason.
By changing the water for bottling (correct in mineral salts and without harmful microorganisms) the water is boiling. The problem is that artificial milk is not sterilized and because of not boiling water serious infections can occur (severe meningitis and necrotizing enterocolitis that occurs with a mortality rate of between 40 to 80%) especially in premature infants and small babies, produced by Cronobacter sakazakii, which was previously known as Enterobacter sakazakii or by Salmonella.
The bottle must be prepared at 70 ° C
To minimize the risk of infection by dust microorganisms the bottle has to be prepared at 70 ° C. That's why the water is boiled, to have a reference of the temperature it reaches (when it boils it is at 100ºC). At that time the saucepan is removed from the heat source (if the water is bottled or we have the certainty that it is potable it does not need to be boiling for a while) and we wait for it to cool a little, so that the temperature drops to near 70 ° C. From the five minutes, more or less, it may already be a good time to dust, the limit being 30 minutes (beyond that it will not be hot enough).
Then the water is mixed with the powder and cooled to give it to the baby, usually soaking it in cold water for a while until it reaches the right temperature.
But won't it lose properties?
There are people who argue that you don't have to prepare milk with hot water because properties are lost. It is true, by heating the water some of the properties of the artificial milk formula are lost, such as the vitamin C. However, it is more advisable to eliminate possible microorganisms than to keep this vitamin "alive" and therefore, yes or yes, you have to heat the water.
