Advice needed on bottle-feeding for a primarily bf'd baby

[SpeedyGonzalez]

I'm planning to primarily bf DC2, and have two questions:

1. Since I'll mostly be bfing, roughly how many bottles might I need to buy?

2. Do I really need to sterilise from Day 1? Why?

tia!

Hi,

How many bottles you need kind of depends on how many feeds a day you plan to give as a bottle I think? I would get 6. Tommee Tippee are very good. Then you can have three in the steriliser and three ready to go.

I would sterilise. Just for piece of mind really. I'm sure if your dish washer is clean and hot enough it would probably be ok. But still for first 4 months when you can really do without tummy bugs (on top of every thing else your dealing with!) I would sterilise.

That's my opinion any way, for what its worth!

Thanks, bumbums! I'll have to have a think about how many feeds we'll do per day...and we don't have a dishwasher but I think if I'm mostly bfing maybe we can get away with just boiling rather than trying to find space in our teeny kitchen for our steam steriliser.

I breastfeed primarily but gave one bottle of expressed milk in the evening (to let me go to sleep early and dh give the 11pm feed). I bought 2 bottles in the beginning (150ml ones) as they only take about that for the first 3 months. I then got 4 x 260ml bottles, all tommee tippee. When my dd grew I just replaced the teats for the age appropriate ones.I only ever gave one or two bottles a day though. I also got the tommee tippee microwave steriliser. The advise is to fully sterilise teats and bottles for at least the first 6 months or even the first year. If I'm not mistaken even the hottest dishwasher wash wont kill all bacteria. It needs to be over 100 degrees (boiling) for a few minutes (and I think dishwashers are only 80 degrees? If you think yours is hotter than that check your brands customer services). Obviously you don't need a microwave (or other) steriliser, you can just boil the bottles, if you only have a few, in a pan everyday for a few minutes, does the same trick.

Snuppeline, thanks - that sounds pretty much what I plan to do feed-wise for the first few months.

Re sterilising, I may be wrong, but what happens after the bottles have been sterilised - isn't there a chance of bacteria getting in between then and the next feed? I just think that since breasts are not sterile, it seems odd that we should sterilise bottles so fastidiously. Am basically a newbie to bottles, hence all my questioning!

Just found an ancient thread by RTKanga saying you really don't need to sterilise as long as you're good on hygiene and wash everything in hot, soapy water. This advice came from the microbiologists in the hospital after she gave birth to a very poorly, very prem baby. So I think that's good enough for me!

Thanks again for help.