How long did you sterilize bottles for?

I just read up to 6 months.. that seems a little excessive to me..

with my first, which was almost 5 years ago, I wasn’t aware of this so we sterilized in boiling water before first use and then just washed the bottles with hot water and soap onwards. She was fine though, and actually has hardly ever gotten sick except the odd cough/cold from playing with other kids.

My second was a preemie so was in the NICU for almost a month, bottles were obviously sterilized during that time, although he did have a feeding tube half the time he was in there. When he came home we only sterilized his bottles for about a month or 2. Using sterilizing bags..

I now have a 5 week old and this time around I wanted to be more “eco friendly” and buy a reusable microwaveable sterilizer instead of buying bags.. but unfortunately it ended up being too big to fit in our microwave and being so busy with 3 under 5, I haven’t gotten around to checking out new ones so we’ve just been sterilizing them in boiling water. We have been sterilizing her bottles after each use and it’s a bit of a pain having to stand over the stove for 3/4 5 minute rounds when I have 3 little ones to tend to(I rinse bottles as she uses them then wash/sterilize them all together in the evening to get ready for the next day) I just have so much other stuff on my “to do list” each day I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes, that list literally never ends lol

Do I really have to do this for 6 months?