Bottle feeding - how?

[woollysocksaresexy]

I am due DC3 shortly, unfortunately there are issues with the pregnancy and baby will need to be born a bit early, probably around 35-36 weeks, and will be a bit small. I breastfed both my other DC, which in an ideal world i would do for this one too, but I will probably need to bottle feed this one.
But... how? Stupid question I know. But what do you do to make it less of a faff? Having to prep each bottle separately, when out, or in the middle of the night, or with a screaming baby, and then wait for it to cool down? Or is there an easier way? It all seems a total pita compared with just getting my tit out! Please tell me your top tips!

[Sparklyuggs]

Sorry to hear your baby is coming early.

I ended up bottle feeding unexpectedly. I found the perfect prep machine great to make each bottle up fresh, and I use MAM bottles as they can be sterilised in the microwave. When out and about I used the ready made bottles, simply added to a sterilised bottle.

[Ebony12]

Hi there,
I bottle feed as well and just take out ready made cartons. If you use cow and gates they have ready made bottles even with the teat that are disposable - they are a little expensive but so convenient . You will get into a new routine plus it means your partner can help with feeds as well.

[AnaKristina]

I use ready made formula -aptamil. It's more expensive but it's easy to prepare so for me is worth of money. It's also sterile. Possible a good option to start with as you would avoid issues with preparing the formula if you need to spend time looking after other baby's needs and you feel over tired. It's much more expensive though but can be used for the first month or two perhaps.

[AnaKristina]

I use mam bottles. Your baby may be happy with any slow flow teat. Mine was a nightmare. Everything was too fast and he was choking on them. Dr brown has premature bottles with really slow flow teats and I think some manufacturers can provide them on request

[MagicFajita]

We use a perfect prep machine and Dr browns bottles. We always have a small carton of ready made formula in the nappy bag for when we're out and about. We just put a sterile bottle in the thermal bottle bag before we go out.

A travel bottle warmer (basically a thermos flask with a deep lid) is really useful too if your baby prefers warm milk.

[Shadowboy]

To make a quick bottle eg a 6oz, we would put in 6x scoops of formula, add 80ml of just boiled water. Agitate, until fully dissolved. We would then add 100ml of previously cooked, boiled water to 180ml (just over 6oz mark to account for the volume of powder. Done. No need to wait to cool.

[Shadowboy]

Cooled not cooked!

[1stTimeRounder]

Man bottles are great. We use Milton cold water sterilizing for the bottles and ready made formula is a life saver.
We give milk at room temperature so we don't need bottle warmers and we use the 200ml bottles for out and about and we used it for night feeds when we were still doing them.
For the 1ltr bottles which we keep in fridge once opened we warm for 10-30 seconds in the microwave (depending on size of feed) to bring up to room temp. Just give it a shake to mix after microwave warming. In first few weeks we were doing 8-10 feeds per day and I found it very useful to have plenty of bottles so I could clean them when we had time and not panic. I think we had 9 bottles on the go at one stage!
Also in early days sometimes we would so a feed and he would still be hungry and ready mixed formula was so useful because you can just throw some more in the bottle without any fuss or any extra equipment.

[raviolidreaming]

Same as Sparklyuggs, although we also had an electric steriliser.