Fig. 12. Articles Needed for Baby's Feeding.
CARE OF BOTTLES AND NIPPLES
When there is a bottle for each individual feeding in the day, immediately after each nursing both bottle and nipple should be rinsed in cold water and left standing, filled with water, until the bottles for one day's feeding have all been used. The nipples should be scrubbed, rinsed, and wiped dry and kept by themselves until their boiling preparation for the following day's feeding.
If the same bottle is to be used for the successive feedings during the day, it should be rinsed, washed with soap and water, and both bottle and nipple placed in cold water and brought quickly to the boiling point and allowed to boil for fifteen minutes. No bottles or nipples must ever be used after a mere rinsing; boiling, preceded by a thorough washing in soap and water, must take place before they are used a second time.
New nipples are often hard and need to be softened, which is readily done by either prolonged boiling or rubbing them in the hands.
All new bottles should be annealed by placing them on the stove in a dishpan of cold water and allowing them to boil for twenty minutes, and then allowing them to remain in the water until they are cold. When bottles are treated in this manner they do not break so readily when being filled with boiling water or hot food.
PREPARING THE FOOD
In a large preserving kettle place all the utensils needed in the preparation of the food—pitcher, spoon, fork, measuring glass, bottles, nipples, cheesecloth for straining, agate cup, wire strainer, in fact everything that is to be used in the preparation of the food. Now fill the kettle with cold water and place over the gas and allow to boil for fifteen minutes. On a well-scrubbed worktable place a clean dish towel, and on this put the utensils and the bottles right side up. The nipples on being taken out of the boiling water will dry of themselves; they should be placed in a glass-covered jar until they are needed for each individual feeding, the nipples not being placed on the bottles as they go to the ice box.