Struggling to keep up with night feeds

[Bakingmad001]

Hi MN
FTM here with 3 week old. I was exclusively breast feeding for 5 days then started introducing formula from due to me wanting a break sometimes. I’m now mostly formula feeding and I’m struggling to keep up with the night feeds. By the time he’s woken me up, I’ve boiled kettle and waited for it to cool for 30 mins, made the bottle and waited for bottle to cool to right temp - he’s screaming, red in face and eating his hands. I wait 30 mins for kettle to cool and for those 30 mins he’s screaming. Am I doing something wrong? I feel absolutely terrible and scared to ask HV. I feel a failure when it comes to feeding him, I hate feeding time because he just gets in such a state. He also has been diagnosed with reflux and I think he possibly has colic too. Any advice?

You can buy a perfect prep machine and keep it next to your bed, or you can make bottles up in advance, cool rapidly and store in the back of the fridge. Use within 24 hours.

Either ready made bottles or a perfect prep machine, save your sanity!!

I would say if you can't or don't want to go back to more breastfeeding (right temperature, on tap, less likely to cause colic) then use premade formula at night fed at room temperature & during the day either a formula prep machine or have two flasks to hand one of very hot water and one of cooled ready for feeding time.

You can make bottles in advance and store them at back of fridge, then warm for individual feeds using a thermos of hot water. Takes five min to warm a feed.
You can also mix feed, I had twins and fed both breast and bottle at night.
You can also use ready prepared formula (you can buy large cartons of it (or small cartons for single use) and store it for 24 hours in fridge.
People use kettles at night to WARM feeds not to prepare bottles from scratch. It would be madness for sleep deprived mums to be juggling boiling water at that time of night.

Personally I would be breastfeeding at night to make life easier. Frequent night feeds will boost your supply and baby may be less colicky.
One twin was breastfed more frequently less bottles, the other with a poor latch was mostly bottles. I can tell you the bottle-fed twin was waking all night unsettled and the breastfed one was much more contented.
By six months they were getting a mixture of breast, bottles and meals

Make the bottles in advance, quickly cool and store at the back of the fridge, then heat when he wakes. You can keep them in the fridge for 24 hours although I used to make a batch in the morning and one at night so they weren’t left for that long.

I mainly BF but gave one bottle a night at that age. It didn't take half an hour to cool a bottle. Do you put it in cold water?

You could get done ready made formula and use that done of the time to make things easier (maybe not all the time as it's expensive) or get a perfect prep.

I just moved to EBF as I find it easier since DH didn't help with versa anyway!

And you are NOT a failure. It's an unbelievably stressful (although in retrospect amazing) time. No one really explains the nuts and bolts of feeding and timings and the sheer exhaustion of struggling to give a tiny baby feeds in the depths of the night.
You are being so conscientious to cool boiled water to just right temp etc but there is a safe way to do it in advance as millions of parents have been doing, as long as you sterilize bottles measure properly and have functioning fridge.

Another option is start preparing the bottle before he wakes up crying for it, if he usually wakes up at the same time

The other option is keep a sterile baby bottle of boiled water in fridge then add half freshly boiled hot water to formula powder shake till powder dissolved then add the cold fridge boiled water to the formula bottle. But you need to measure carefully both the boiled hot and boiled cool water before you add it, it isn't the measurement on made-up formula it is the proportion of water to powder that counts.

I used to tip the boiling water into bottles let it cool put them on the bedside table and pre measure out the formula. In the night tip in the powder and shake. He used to drink room temperature milk. Worked well for me and didn't have to leave the bedroom.

Perfect prep machine will save your soul.

Make up bottles and fridge them, at the back. Warm it up, make sure you swill it around (to avoid hotspots) and check on your wrist

To add - I'd be wary of the PP machine, it can harbour mould and bacteria inside

Make up bottles and fridge them, at the back. Warm it up, make sure you swill it around (to avoid hotspots) and check on your wrist

Yes do this! I've done this with both my children from birth. Neither have fallen ill. As long as you use them within 24 hours of making them you'll be fine.

I dont know if this is helpful (hopefully not patronising) but this is what I did:

1. wash and sterilise 3 or 4 bottles
2. make up the formula as per instructions
3. place those 3 or 4 bottles in cold water to cool down quickly and then place at the back of the fridge ready for when they are needed
4. wash and sterilise a further 3 or 4 bottles and leave in the steriliser (they can remain in there for 24 hours as long as it's not opened). When you get to your last bottle of formula, you can then make more

The reason I leave some bottles in the steriliser is that I always seemed to flick the kettle on and wait the 30mins and suddenly realise the bottles weren't ready. They get so hot in the microwave it takes ages to cool down so this just saves time.

Thankyou so much for these tips , they are so helpful as I feel clueless when it comes to to feeding. I am considering doing more BF at night, he does seem to be more settled after BF. I also really like the idea of preparing bottles in advance as this kettle boiling at 3am is killing me. Sorry to sound really stupid,
but after making the bottles, would I immediately put into fridge? And how would you warm the bottles up after taking out the fridge? HV made me paranoid by telling me to make a bottle fresh when needed but I just can’t keep waiting for kettle throughout the night so if there’s a safe way I am going to do it.

I used to cool the bottles quickly (layer of cold water to come half way up sides with ice cubes) in sink before putting in fridge. I only made up 3 bottles at a time

You get a jug (pyrex?) Fill with boiling water to half way point, put bottle from fridge in. Leave two mins, shake, another two mins? Try a dummy run when you aren't frazzled, in the day?
Then discard any leftover feed, do not put back in fridge

Tbh a small bottle made freshly made shouldn't take that long to cool..have you tried large pyrex basin with ice cubes, instead of running under cold tap? Should only take a few mins.
You can add freshly boiled water to formula it doesn't have to sit for exactly 30 mins, they just don't recommend leaving it LONGER than 30 mins. It has to be hot to kill any bacteria in the formula powder, but they don't want people to scald babies which is why the 30 min kettle instruction is there.
(I think)

You can emulate a perfect prep if you want one flask of boiling one of cooled boiled and then put hot shot in bottle with formula and shake then top up with cooled. Do it all from bed just like you would if BFing.

You can buy a bottle warming machine (eg tommee tipped one) so you are not handling hot water at night or worrying about getting temp wrong.

Or give baby cold bottle. All of mine have been fine with cold!

Perfect prep next to your bed - it will make life so much easier and your DH can do some of the feeds.

@Bakingmad001
I used to have a few bottles ready with the right amount of water and just keep them in a bottle warmer on bedside table (one at a time obviously). I had a little container from ASDA that had 3 compartments with a spout so could have 3 lots of formula measured in ready to mix. So when it was time to feed you just pour the powder into the water, give it a good shake, and you're ready to go

Coin that is now considered dangerous.
You need to add very hot water to powder to kill any bacteria regardless of the "cooled"boiled water

I would use ready made formula at night, and see if he'll take it at room temperature, or just breastfeed instead.

As an aside, you don't need to wait 30 minutes after boiling the kettle, it's "no more than 30mins", so you can add the hot water a few minutes after it's boiled. The "no more than 30 minutes" is to make sure the water is at least 70 degrees still so that any bugs in the powder are killed.