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Bottle Feeding Basics
Bottle feeding takes a bit of maneuvering and trial and error before everyone catches on to the program. Especially when you’re working with newborns.
We start by reading the Pump Station’s offering a baby a bottle information. Then we get one (or a few) of the safer plastic baby bottles with silicone nipples (safer than rubber) and we’re ready to go.
The two big lessons for us: making sure the milk or formula is warm enough throughout the feeding, and that everyone (baby and the person feeding her) is calm.
If you’re just starting to think about breastmilk in a bottle as a concept, see the Pump Station’s pumping guidelines and information about breastmilk collection and storage.
Here are the brands and tactics we used to find bottles that work for our babies:
Kelly used the BornFree bottle for newborn Oliver. He took a long time to finish a bottle, but wasn’t gassy. When he turned four months, Oliver wanted a faster flow and no longer needed the anti-gas feature. Kelly switched to the lovely named Gerber Fashion Tints.
Lyndsey’s son Waylon, on the other hand, didn’t take to the BornFree. It was too hard for him to get the milk out, and he seemed gassy. Lyndsey tried Dr. Brown’s bottles, which worked great.
Since Dr. Brown’s bottles are the “bad plastic”, Lyndsey, or rather Waylon’s dad Steve, heated the milk in a Medela bottle from the Pump In Style Breastpump or a glass baby bottle, then poured the warmed milk into the Dr. Brown’s bottle.
If we’re pumping into our favorite milk storage bag (made from the safe polyethylene) and freezing, to reheat the milk we set the frozen milk bag in a Pyrex cup of hot water to thaw and warm, then transfer to a bottle.
The process sounds more complicated than it is, or maybe it’s that complicated and we’ve gotten used to it.
We’ve also considered glass bottles for feedings, but the risk of broken glass stopped us. That said, many parents try glass bottles and like them, plus they’re better for the environment (no toxic waste or global warming from plastic manufacturing).
A last thought…once our babies get past the newborn stage, and sometimes during, we’ve been known to mix and match different brands of bottles and nipples.
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