Advice on expressing milk, when and what steriliser?

[brockleyD]

Hi,

My baby is only 3 weeks but some friends told me if I plan to introduced expressed milk via bottle I should do that between 3-4 weeks, otherwise they will reject it?

Any advice on when best timing is to introduce expressed milk and which bottles/ sterilisers are best. I was planning on buying a small microwave steriliser as my flat is small and apparently milton has a smell/taste?

Thank you.

4-6 weeks seems to be best as you really want to wait until you and your LO are confident bfing and have no latch issues, plus your supply is established. Though there is no magic time that means you'll have no issues - even if your LO takes a bottle at 6 weeks, it doesn't mean they will at 3 months. Some babies take a bottle fine no matter when they start, others you need to persevere a bit with.

Wide neck bottles (e.g. Tommee Tippee or Breastflow) are often recommended for ebm - but IME the most important thing is insisting on a good latch when using a bottle, ie. only giving it when LO has their mouth wide open with tongue down, never push the teat in.

We use Milton in a Milton bucket - it's simple (especially when you're not sterilising a lot), cheap and it's what we got used to in special care. As long as I use gloves when putting stuff in and getting stuff out, it doesn't bother me (it starts to really dry your skin out). We air dry everything afterwards.

I don't think you need to sterilise? Just wash in hot soapy water/dishwasher. BM is naturally antibacterial I think. I'm sure there will be some official guidelines on this somewhere.

I'm trying to get brave enough not to sterilise with my DS but so far not doing too well! FWIW, my DD refused to take anything sterilised in Milton, I guess because of the taste, but I'm not sure if that's a common problem. We are also in a small flat and use a travel microwave steriliser, about £5 from Tesco. I got some Breastflow bottles as recommended on here but not tried them yet. They were on offer in TK Maxx, BTW.

I exclusively BF for first 6 months.

For expressed milk I used Tommee Tippee "closer to nature" bottles and (on advice of midwife at the Portland) never sterilised bottles or pump (just used dishwasher for bottles). Never had any problems.

(and I have a totally unused steriliser still sitting on a shelf somewhere...)