Breastfeeding Advice

[mrstaylor9]

Hi all,

I'm currently 35 weeks pregnant and planning to breastfeed. It's our first child and whilst we have done antenatal classes it's all a lot to process and remember.

I'm planning to breastfeed but wondering if I should already buy a breast pump and bottles so DH can help with night feeding.

Can anyone recommend the following items:
Electric or manual breast pumps. Any particular brands and is there a difference in how well they work?
Are all baby bottles the same? If I just get a starter kit should that be fine for now? I was told some babies don't like certain bottles or dummies but not sure if that's true.
Any sterilising tablets for baby bottles or should I invest in one of those UV sterilisers? They just seem very expensive.

Appreciate any advice as I said I'm new to this and pregnancy brain has kicked in and I'm trying to be as prepared as I can be but finding all a little overwhelming. Thank you!

Hey, I honestly wouldn’t stress yourself about buying any of this so soon.

Few reasons..
You shouldn’t bottle feed until about 6 weeks and you’ve established a latch.
You’re unlikely to leave baby for a few months, so don’t need a milk freezer stash or anything like that.
You’ll have a lot of leakage and could use the little milk collectors or a hakka (it is a pump but you can use it lightly) for a little bit of milk rather than pumping.
Most bottles are the same, you can get some ‘breastfeeding’ ones but babies in my experience either get it or they don’t. I’ve been breastfeeding for 3.5 years, two kids and neither have taken a bottle!

Of course it’s hard work doing all the feeds, but partner can help and bond in lots of ways. I found it harder pumping and then getting my partner to feed.. I was doing more work than just feeding them myself!

You don’t need to sterilise bottles for breastfeeding, hot soapy water is fine, it’s formula that’s the reason for sterilising whereas breastmilk doesn’t go off the same. Some people prefer to obvs, but I wouldn’t get anything expensive for how little you’ll need it.

I’ll link below some great resources.. breastfeeding is something you learn and it takes time, but you can give yourself a head start! Good luck, any questions just ask 😊

This is one of the best videos I watched

Yes, this video is priceless. It helped me so much. The whole series is great!

@Noi thank you this is very helpful!

For some reason I can't see a link to a video. Can you send me the name of the video and I can google it. Thank you!

google ‘attaching your baby to the breast’ global health - English

Best thing your partner can do is help resettle after a feed if needed and give you lie-ins when he's not going off to work. Much more useful than you faffing about with pumps and getting baby to take a bottle as well as establishing breastfeeding. Being able to just pull your top up and latch rather than making up a bottle is easier at any time of day, triple that in the middle of the night

I planned on breastfeeding but due to both me and baby being unwell initially we did combi feeding for the first few weeks (nursing, pumping and formula).

Whilst in hospital I was lent a pump and they provided disposable bottles. Once we were home we ordered stuff on Amazon and got everything we needed then - and we decided what to get based on what we had used in hospital and found useful. I'm glad I hadn't bought loads of stuff in advance.

Exclusively breastfeeding now despite our rocky start and it's lovely.

I know the advice is to exclusively breastfeed at start to avoid confusion, but I combi fed from birth, primarily because DS was readmitted for bronchiolitis a few days after birth and the nurses needed to carefully control how much milk was going in to avoid the stomach pressing on his lungs. I would say though that neither of us had any issues with latching from the start though. When we were home, DH would "take over" for half the night (we swapped nightly between the 9pm-2am shift and 3am-7am shift) so I had a really decent block of sleep so I could recover from surgery, especially after sleeping on the ward with DS for a week. It saved my mental health, as I really struggle to go back to sleep after being roused.

I used the Medula hand pump then a double electric pump, but not hands free so hard to use at the same time. I preferred the hand pump. Tommee Tippee bottles, although DS ended up preferring a very cheap and cheerful Sainsbury's bottle in the end.

Good luck and do whatever makes you happy, so you enjoy the time with your baby. Between the two of you, you'll find something that works!

P.s. I ended up breastfeeding exclusively as soon as DS started sleeping decent chunks, so nothing is either/or.

Agree with above. Don’t worry about pumps and sterilisers
now. And watch that video it’s amazing!

Imo/e breastfeeding makes for an easier life.. Adding pumping /washing and making bottles /buying formula puts that plan to the bloody ddogs. Concentrate on establishing bf and a routine... Dh can bond in many other ways.

I wouldn't buy anything in advance, maybe a bottle to put your mind at rest that you have something.. but yes it absolutely is true that babies have preferences and it can take a while to work out which dummy / bottle / everything they like.

Might be useful to try and establish breastfeeding before pumping, but if you would like to have 'something' then a hakka pump is effective and not expensive so could do the trick.

There are a wealth of breastfeeding resources available so hopefully once baby is here you will be able to troubleshoot as needed, while your in the hospital try to make use of the infant feeding support - sometimes the latch of a sleepy just born baby seems okay but any areas for improvement become a lot more pronounced when you get home and they 'wake up' and need a lot more milk.

I'm going to say the opposite to everyone else here, and encourage you to at least have a plan in place for if breastfeeding doesn't work out. After an unplanned stay in NICU, DS was discharged home on expressed milk topups, and the hospital was only able to lend us a pump for 48 hours. DH had to do a mad rush to buy bottles the morning we were discharged, and then we had to find and purchase a pump before the hospital came knocking to take theirs back.

I'm hindsight I wish we'd considered which bottle we would start with, and had a couple of those on hand, and at least got in contact with a pump hire place so when we did need to urgently arrange one over a weekend we had a plan ready to go.

Absolutely. I didn't have any bottles and my baby was readmitted with dehydration due to low milk. Buy the bottles. Be prepared for various situations. You don't need to spend a fortune just a couple of bottles just in case.

It's very important to feed at night as your prolactin levels are highest then. The first 6 weeks are crucial to building up supply so you shouldn't skip these. Babies also cluster feed in the evening and also suck for comfort. My DH did a lot of the nappy changes, PJs and re-settling (newborns cry a lot and are awake for long random times) so I could keep my strength for feeding.

Buy a couple of bottles and a tin of formula if you really want. Don't buy a sterilizer or prep machine, you can just sterilize by boiling the bottles. And you can boil water for formula. So you can do this in a pinch and the next day go buy a sterilizer if needed.

I really didn't plan to breastfeed long but after the first 6 weeks (which are HARD), breastfeeding gets slowly easier. My baby is 5.5 months and people are asking me when I'm going to start giving formula. And my honest answer is not for a while, breastfeeding is so much easier, fuck bottles and sterilising, I really cannot be arsed.

I did ocasionaly pump after 8 weeks, baby takes an ocasion bottle just fine.

There is so much opinion and information. I agree that you need a back up plan as breast feeding although great when cracked…can be really hard at the start!

I bought MAM self sterilising bottles (you can sterilise them easily in microwave by adding water) before my baby was born and I’m so glad I did! She had tongue tie and it was really hard at the start to get her to regain her birth weight. So we needed formula top ups. We bought some ready to go formula as well to help us.

If the breast feeding doesn’t come easily, you have a back up plan to help you get to a stage where you are exclusively breast feeding. You don’t want to be working out the back up plan when you come home from hospital sleep deprived.

I would also research pumps in advance…I didn’t do this and wish I had. The hospital might be able to lend you one. Not necessarily buy a pump straight away but have an idea of what you want.

I hope it all goes well for you!

I'd have a pump on hand. I was an over supplier and was readmitted with mastitis when my first was 6 days old. Pumping for comfort might be a necessity even if baby never takes a bottle (mine never did)

Just to say I am still breastfeeding my 16month old after a rocky start. We did need to do top ups after he wasn’t gaining and all the hospital pumps were leant out. We used ready made formula in the little bottles that came with disposable teats and then ordered a pump on Amazon prime. Then some top ups were breast milk, some formula and eventually we stopped the top ups and just breastfed.

I personally would say you could have a pack of the formula starter packs with teats in the cupboard in case of emergency. I did also buy a cheap steam steriliser and some bottles.

We eventually found Mam to be the best bottles for our boy.

I’d recommend you follow Lucy Webber Feeding Support on Instagram and have a look at some of her different saved highlights.

I'd buy some first milk bottles (aptimil with the screw on teat) for the first few days until you get breastfeeding underway. Unfortunately, we had to use them as hospital were useless in breastfeeding support so combi fed for first fortnight then worked very hard to move to ebf which can be done successfully despite what you maybe told. Also:
Lasinoh disposable breast pads for inside your nursing bra
Read up on mastitis and symptoms so you recognise it if you ever get it and can treat early before it gets bad as can require antibiotics.
A large water bottle with in built straw for your use when doing feeds, it can make you very thirsty.
Some healthy snack foods within reach for times you are trapped by baby feeding or napping on you (breastfeeding uses same amount of energy as a 7 mile walk, daily)
Some smaller muslin cloths for catching leaking milk when baby taking time to latch or coming off feed.
A long phone charger (take to hospital too as sockets often far away) for jeeping ohone charged so you can scroll whilst on feeds and needing to stay awake.
I wish you well with it all, it's not east in the first few days but so worth it for you and lo when you get the hang of it.

I also combi fed from day 2, although for the first three months, my LO would only take a bottle from daddy, not from me (and why should they, when BM is available?!). It meant we didn't have to go through that awkward stage of trying to persuade an EBF baby to suddenly take a teat at six weeks.

I had PLANNED to EBF, but A baby arrived early so I hadn't bought a pump, and B I was exhausted after the birth (hallucinating tired), which led DP to go to the local supermarket and pick up a ready to feed pack with the pre-sterilised teats. So we didn't do lots of research into bottles or formula brands, we just got what was easily available and could be sterilised in the microwave.

You can work a lot of this out after the baby arrives and you see what works for you. Good luck! Adventure awaits.

Lansinhoh reusable breast pads would be my rec 😅 comfy and less waste when you're already going through a million maternity pads a day...

You still need to sterilise if using breastmilk

I've got short nipples and at the beginning the latch was only possible with nipple shields - weaning off them now, so you're not locked in forever. Also recommend an IBCLC consultant if you can afford.