– Bottlefeeding

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I know what you’re thinking…huh, I thought she was breastfeeding?!

I am but from the age of 2 weeks George has taken a bottle of expressed breastmilk. It has been an opportunity for dad to get some bonding time with baby and it’s one less feed for me. Albeit I still express around this time, as it’s this that provides tomorrow’s bottle content.

If you want to know more on expressing then visit my blogs: Breastfeeding: The Journey So Far and What Got Us Through: Breastfeeding

So this blog is aimed at what has helped us to integrate bottles into our routine and has allowed us to continue doing so successfully – rather than an experience of having a baby who is exclusively bottle-fed.

The Bottle

Although my intention was always to breastfeed if I could, I wanted to have a backup supply of bottles and some ready-made formula in case it wasn’t happening. There are SO MANY brands of bottles out there and I read that babies can feed better from bottles and teats they prefer, and I didn’t want to have a variety of different types if I could help it.

During my standard trawl of Google and mummy Instagram accounts, I came across MAM bottles – they caught my eye as they are advertised as anti-Colic and had read some really positive reviews. Plus the added bonus being that the bottles can be sterilised in the microwave, avoiding the need to spend out on buying a steriliser! Bonus.

So I bought a pack of two bottles, if they worked great but if not then I hadn’t spend a fortune in buying loads and all of the accessories.

When baby turned 2 weeks I started expressing milk. George took his first bottle from his dad at the age of 16 days old and he took to the bottle really well – guzzled it down, with one pause for winding.

Fast forward 5 months and we are still using the MAM bottles, now on teat size 2, and every evening a bottle of milk is guzzled in one go. If I need to go out and leave George with dad or family then he will take bottles in the day too.

I cannot recommend these bottles enough. Washing and sterilising is quick and efficient, it even made life easy when we went on our first holiday abroad.

George, like most babies, struggled with his wind in his first couple of months but has never suffered with Colic. This may be unrelated to the bottles but I do think they prevent the build up of excessive air in the bottle during feeding.

Warming the Milk

With a baby used to having his milk served at body temperature I didn’t think he would take too kindly to having his expressed milk straight from the fridge – and I was right!

I wanted to be sure that George would take to the MAM bottles first before investing in a bottle warmer to match. So our first week involved us heating the milk using a jug of boiling water, which required testing of the milk temperature on numerous occasions until it was just right. Very trial and error and with a crying, hungry baby we found this to be quite stressful. Within a week we were looking for bottle warming equipment to make life easier.

The MAM electric bottle and food warmer is priced around £50, or you can get the warmer and steriliser pack for around £80-£90. If we were exclusively bottlefeeding I would have considered it, but we weren’t and for one bottle a day the price seemed a bit steep!

With a bit of research I found that other brands of electric bottle warmers work with the MAM bottles too. We opted for the Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature electric warmer and managed to pick it up for £25. It does a decent job and warms a chilled bottle in 10 minutes!

Muslins, Muslins and More Muslins

I got advised by other mums to get muslins, so I had a pack of 4 for the purpose of clearing up dribble and sicky messes. Not long after George arrived I was purchasing more muslins, as these are so handy and we often go through a new one quite often, so you need spare while the others are being washed. Of course you can use wet wipes to clear up some messes – particularly on clothes – but muslins are kinder and softer on baby’s skin.

We bought ours in the Aldi baby event, cheap an cheerful! I also invested in some sensory muslins from Etta Loves as these have a dual benefit in being useful for sensory development. George often stares at it as he falls asleep.

It has been these three things that have got us through our experience of bottle feeding of expressed milk.