Water for baby formula?

[hmmerr02]

Does anyone know if the water is safe for making baby formula? I know I'll need bottled water for the islands, but wasn't sure about onboard. Any advice?

 

[smores]

you can always bring powder formula and use a filtered sports bottle to filter the water before mixing it with the powder--this works great--can even filter luke warm water so, no heating required. here's an example

http://frontiersurvival.com/watfilsporbo.html

 

[MarkRG]

The onboard water should be fine, also the water at the Deck 9 drink station is double filtered if you're at all concerned.

 

[jonesing]

Some folks have said the sink tap water is safe for drinking. After all, it's the same water used to brush your teeth. But we didn't chance that. We brought jugs and small bottles of Nursery Water www.nurserywater.com to use onboard and at port calls. We also brought a few jars of the ready-to-feed formula for emergency

didn't-pack-enough-formula use.

If you use Enfamil, they make handy prepackaged "sticks" of formula but they are more expensive to use and they only come in the regular Enfamil Lipil (no soy, low iron etc). Instead, we made our own formula tubes using a foodsaver! The handy thing about using prepacked tubes is you can toss a couple in the diaper bag and not be weighted down by a formula can or container. Also, we used the foodsaver to package up premeasured pouches of detergent.

The First Years makes a formula pouch so you don't need a foodsaver machine. Just open the top of the pouch, pour in the measured amount of formula and then seal it up! When you're ready to make a bottle, just rip off the end and dump the powder into the bottle.
http://www.learningcurve.com/product/detail/Y4386

 

[hmmerr02]

Thank you for the tips!

 

[flexsmom]

The ship water is made through a desalinization process on board so it is very clean and it tasted fine, too (better than the water I used to have in CA!)

 

[4theloveofdisney]

I would recommend using Nursery Water. Start using it at home and them bring some with you. We made the mistake of changing our baby's water once while on vacation and she had diarrhea the entire time. We ran out of diapers, she was having accidents on her clothes and we were having to change her clothes so often that I ran out, etc. It was pretty bad and a lesson learned. Don't switch anything while away.

 

[deaner]

I also recommend the nursery water. It is better for your babies and has floride added which regular and bottled water doesn't have.

They sell individual bottle packs at target in the baby section (like a 6 pack) that is easy to carry a bottle with you various places. You could also do a gallon for the room if you want. If you run out of that, you could always use bottled water. Little ones are just so sensitive that I would never take a chance with anything other than bottled water.

Just my opinion....

 

[#1 Minnie Lover]

We cruised when dd was 5 months old. We use nursery water at home and brought it on the ship. It was very easy and I didn't have to worry. Have a great trip.

 

[Qball]

Does anyone know if the water is safe for making baby formula? I know I'll need bottled water for the islands, but wasn't sure about onboard. Any advice?

We just got home from our cruise with DD5 and DS5months and he is bottled fed as well. I agonized months about how I was going to do this bottle thing since we sterilized his bottles up till we left, boiled his formula water. I've never heard of nursery water...maybe a canadian thing?? anyhow, our doctor told us to use bottled water and specifically told us to look for brand names we knew and to look for ones that had the necessary minerals in the water. DO NOT use distilled water. Good idea to start at home if that is a concern.

Since we are paranoid, we decided to bring our own water than use the water at the drinks stations since our DS is only 5 months old...if he was older I might not have been concerned but then I still probably wouldn't have used the drink station water.

As for heating the bottles, we bought an inexpensive "first years" bottle warmer for the room as the fridges aren't cold enough to keep made bottles of formula, so we made the bottles as he needed them.

If you are going on excursions, depending on how long you are away, we heated up the bottle with water only so that it was very hot, so that it would coool down to the desired temperature at feeding time and add the powedered formula, which was measured out for that feeding and kept in a Tupperware container.

Also if you are bringing bottled water onboard and taking the leftovers off with you, be sure to bring your own packing tape (if you are packing it in a box). I ran out and it was pretty difficult to get the front desk to part with their only roll.

 

[HooKooDooKu]

When we travelled with an infant, we opted to filter tap water (I just brought along the one I already had for backcountry hiking).

On previous cruises, we had filled the bathtub to wash the salt water from some equipment and noticed the water took on something of a yellow tint. I didn't know what was causing the yellow color and didn't worry about it from my personal health stand point. But with an infant, I wasn't going to risk it, especially since I already owned a quality water filter I could pack.

 

[aprilgail2]

Where ever I went I just brought along a case or however many I needed of the ready to use nursettes and disposible nipples. Open the bottle, its already room temp so no need to heat up, pop on the nipple, no mixing needed, feed the baby and toss it in the trash. No worries about what water to use etc...