So my best friend's dad is debating buying and having a dishwasher installed for them so they can use it to sterilize the baby bottles and keep up with dishes. But is this really adequate for sterilization? I know in restaurants a dishwasher is used to sterilize and wash dishes but it is super hot (180 degrees or more) and has a chemical sterilization additive as well so you are double covered. Can a home dishwasher from Sears really do the same thing, or should she still sterilize the bottles in a hot water bath?

Honestly I don't know, and I don't want to mislead you on this.

Try to do a little research on the washing machine in question, and see how effectively it really washes things.

My parents washed my baby bottle in a dishwasher, and i'm still living sooo...

For the first month of the child's life I would say that proper sterilisation is better. But honestly not everything has to be sterile.

And once a child reaches about a month old they start putting things in their mouth. Hands and feet and so on. But more importantly they start doing things like drinking bathwater.

The first time my daughter took a big slurp of the bath water, I stopped sterilising her binkies (she never had a bottle).

Most are safe to use, always check with the company that made them first though. Some have extremely high settings for the water temp. Best thing I used for all the bottle tops and nipples is a container that holds them all (like the kind for silverware, but this comes with a closing lid). After the first time I melted a nipple, which fell to the bottom atop the heating element, I decided be safe than sorry, my house smelled horrible for two days. Dishwasher is sufficient to use, but like above I would wait a month or so before doing it, I always made sure my kids things were sterile the old fashion way for the first few months.

I washed all mine's bottle in the dish washer.She suffered no ill effects at all. They even make a little basket for the dishwasher so you won't loose the rings and things. I have tried it both ways and the only difference I found was ,it was harder on me doing everything by hand.Very time consuming.:cool:

When my children were babies we didn't have a dish washer and used a bottle sterilizing unit which was great. I just used to make sure the bottles were well washed in normal, hot soapy water, rinsed well then popped into the sterilizing unit to which had been added a sterilizing tablet.

My kids grew up big and strong (my son is over 6ft!) so whilst I wouldn't say it is wrong to rely on a dish washer, I would say it isn't necessary. Whatever you feel happiest with is the answer I guess.

Well sicne he's already over a month I guess this won't be another dumb thing she does (she's not turning out to be the best mom as I figured). I know they have always sold the baskets and said they were dishwasher top rack safe, but I always question it myself after knowing the industry requirements are probably higher than in the home units.