Advice on what to bf kits to buy for 1st time mum to be

[petrifiedprawn]

Hello, my 1st baby is due in September. I'm starting to look for feeding kits, bottles, sterilisers etc. I'm hoping to bf (will keep an open mind; it doesnt sound easy!) and am thinking of getting a medela electric pump as this is recommended in a lot of previous threads on here but does that mean I will need to buy Medela bottles, steriliser etc? Can I mix and match and buy tommie tippee bottles/steriliser but still use the electric Medela pump? Many thanks xxx

If you need one, try to borrow a pump first rather than just straight away buy. I brought an expensive electric pump, hated it from the start, ended up giving it away. The Tommee tippee stuff we had was great, especially the hand pump which I did use. But do check instructions, friends of ours came home from hospital with hungry new baby, got out new bottles, sterilser etc from boxes, realised all the time it woud take to get everything sterilsed, which then felt 500 times longer with screaming baby.....
Just get a few bits, you can always get more bottles etc if you need once you know what you want.
Good luck and whichever way you decide to feed your baby, don't let anyone make you feel bad about it.

That's a great idea lagoon

Agree that to breast feed you need boobs
many people also are pleased to have breast pads / lansinoh cream

I could not have breastfed without my breast shells as i leaked flowed out of the other side while i fed

this allowed me to catch the milk as breast pads could not absorb the oz's that just pored out. I used breast milk pots by tommee tippee closer to nature, and i kept this milk.
My baby took an occasional bottle (we own 2 bottles but 1 would have been fine) and tommee tippee closer to nature worked for us (though at 8m old she has un-learnt how to drink from a bottle )

I have 3 breast pumps, but thats cause for about 3 months DD had a bottle a day... my favourite is the medala freestyle (expensive but my favourite by far, i also have a medala swing and a hand pump) I am a milk donar (intended to be from pre-pregnancy so i liked having a good pump, and the hospital provided me with sterile bottles as i was a donar)

My breast shells were also amazing in the first few days weeks when nipples were SOO painful, as i could smother in lansinoh then put the shells over so nothing touched them.

I would definitely invest in lansinoh cream breast shells and breast pads (i bought washable ones which were great) and would bother with anything else in those early days until you know what you want.

Unless I missed someone else saying it, feeding bras are pretty essential too!

I wish I hadn't bothered with expressing etc. Was more hassle than any benefit I gained and less hygenic than direct feeding. But everyone has different experiences. I would wait until your baby arrives and you find out what you need. You can hire hospital grade pumps if necessary. And hand expressing for the odd bottle or cup is definitely worth learning.

I used up the free samples of Lansinoh but didn't need anymore and I never used breastpads.

I do have about 6 bf-specific bras. I bought 2 before the birth but its worth waiting for the others to find out what size you are.

Good luck with it all - and well done for planning to bf.
I also bought a couple of tops to help with the first few weeks (I have twins who fed frequently so boobs were in and out a lot) but you REALLY don't need these and there are lots of threads on how to make your normal clothes work for bfing.

Vaseline is just as effective as lansinoh and an awful lot cheaper . Either is only any help if you have actual cracks or nipple damage, as they're use is to aid moist wound healing (see the word 'wound' there? hopefully you won't get one, so won't need any). Even then, they do nothing to address the cause of the soreness, for which you need expert help .

Essentials... er... boobs

Bf bras can be handy, but it is possible to manage without
Some people need pads, but not everyone leaks, so don't buy too many, you can always get more.

Pretty much everything else is non-essential, and if it turns out you do need it for some reason then the shops will still be open after the baby is born .

I would second everything everyone else has said about not needing to buy lots of stuff.

Do also have a look at open and closed systems on a pump. It doesn't bother some people, but personally I could never buy an open system pump (which includes the Medela Swing) and you absolutely should not buy or borrow a Swing second hand as it's not hygienic.

I sent my mum out to buy bought a Widgey breastfeeding cushion, because I thought it looked like a good idea. It was, sort of - after DS1 got past a certain size (he slipped down between me and the widgey at first) it was a nice firm base to stick him on, and it also balanced plates of food, and my laptop! But honestly, you don't need a breastfeeding pillow. I think you can become too dependent on them (I remember taking my widgey out for meet-ups with antenatal friends at cafes - the thing is about 80cm long and heavy!). With DS2, I somehow fed him differently and found that all I needed was a cushion off the sofa under my elbow. (Of course, by then I'd learnt the advanced skills of MNing with one hand...)

If you find you need to wear pads at night, putting them under a stretchy vest is a lot more comfy than a bra!

I never used Lansinoh with my first, but I'm finding it handier with DS2. I'd wait and see - it's available in Boots, so someone can always pop out for some if you need it.

Agree that the best thing you can do is to get in touch with a local breastfeeding group, or find out what resources there are available locally to support breastfeeding - just in case you find that you need some.

Agree with Ruby, the food of love is AMAZING!!!!
And lansinoh, don't know how I would have done it without it!
Also check your nipples, nobody tells you, but if they're naturally flat you might be in for a hard time, there are things called nipplettes to help with this (really wish I'd known before I had DD!)
Good luck with everything

Hi OP. You probably/hopefully won't need, as others have said, but IF YOU DO you may need the kit quickly and at a time when its hard to think straight. This happened to me and if I could do it over I would - do the research now (as you are doing) then put the products into my Amazon account in the 'leave in basket for later' function. Make sure other half/mum or someone can access it (suppose you could use the 'wishlist' function instead and send a link to them). Personally I would have put in medela swing pump, lansinoh bm storage bags, 2 tommee tippee closer to nature bottles and a microwave steriliser. Also, I would have had the details of a local source to hire a hospital grade pump.

What you really need for breastfeeding is an insulated cup with a non-spill lid, a kindle (with a light) for one-handed reading, a comfy chair, maybe a foot stool, a side table with TV remote contol, a whole heap of DVD box sets, and someone to bring you drinks and food. All that plus some boobs and you'll be set.

Hi op

If you want to bf you would be better off spending money on 'the womanly art of Breastfeeding' by la leche league. It's full of the wisdom we would have had in ages gone by about bf. best you prepare to bf not prepare to bottle feed (which is what buying a steriliser amounts to). If you need to bottle feed down the line you can get bottles/steriliser then.

Also, what Zachary said!

Everyone's different. I bought loads of breastpads before my baby arrived, and never needed them as I never leaked. In my case, I also found it hard to feed my baby for the first 7 weeks (before my milk supply grew to suit to my baby's needs) and he was on the boob more or less round the clock. Cluster feeding at night (not coming off the boob for hours and hours) is common in small hungry babies, and got me on to expressing (at about 5am, the only time I had milk he hadn't taken) - that and the 6-week growth spurt. So I guess what I'm saying is that you may well need to express, depending on your milk supply. Expressing can also be great for giving you the freedom to get out and leave the baby with your mum or dp for a while (the consensus seems to be that you will need to introduce your baby to the concept of a bottle before they are 6 weeks old), and may help you carry on bfing when you go back to work.

I couldn't get anything out by hand (for the same reason my baby couldn't, I guess) so a breastpump was essential. A manual one wouldn't have worked for me as I'd have got rsi. I wish I'd got the medela swing myself. But if you research the one you want now you can work out what the delivery times are. If you can get it from a supplier in 24 hours or so I'd hold off till you've decided you need one as the medela swing is expensive.

DS didn't latch on for a week, so I fed him with expressed milk through a tiny tube taped to my finger, as advised by the feeding co-ordinator at the hospital. We didn't get home from hospital until nearly 1am, so it was really useful to have the steriliser and a couple of bottles already, though DH could have gone out to get them once it became clear that breastfeeding wasn't going to be straightforward.

I'd got a Philips Avent manual pump in advance, and had practised putting it together, but when we arrived home I couldn't manage to get it working, so hand expressed as I'd been shown by a midwife. I found it quite easy to hand express, so have never used the pump in the end.