Reasons You Should Not Warm Your Baby's Bottle in the Microwave

Here is a reminder to all parents that we should not warm your little ones bottle in the microwave. Yes we all love the modern technology of the microwave. Hey it is a convenient little box that cooks dinner in under ten minutes on some nights. We are all looking to save time, but using the microwave is not a good option for warming up your child's bottle

There are three main reasons why you should not use a microwave to heat the bottle. The most common one is because the microwave heats at an uneven temperature. How many of us have taken something out of the microwave where it was cold in the middle and burnt around the edges? There is no way to tell what the overall temperature of the bottle is once it has gone in the microwave. The outside of the bottle may even feel okay to touch, but that is not an indicator of the temperature of the liquid inside.

Many parents heat the formula right in the bottles. Think about it for a moment. Your placing a plastic item in a box that heats up. Plastic melts. Overtime the plastic can easily melt or change the structure of the bottle. The nipples can become warn and pose as potential chocking hazards. Chemicals, from the melting plastic, can mix with your baby's formula.

A lot of parents do not realize it, but by warming breast milk in the microwave you actually changing the consistency of it. The proteins and nutrients are broken down by the high temperature. If you want your baby to have the full nutritional advantage that breast milk offers then do not microwave it.

Bottle warmers may be a good option for some families; I just did not see the need in one. For a while I used to warm my baby's bottle in a cup of hot water. That was short lived though. By the time he was 5 to 6 months old I realized that he tolerated room temperature water. So I would purchase water and leave it on the counter. This was also great when we were out and I could not warm up his bottles. We did a lot of traveling so, for me, it was not always practical to use a bottle warmer or to find hot water.

Often we see parents on television warming their baby's bottle with the microwave, we may hear our friends talking about it, or maybe even our own parents did it for us; regardless it is never a good option to use the microwave for this. Perhaps we may have even done this ourselves in the past and since we did not see any immediate negative consequence we think it is okay. Just because we did not see any negatives does not mean they do not exist.