Bottle feeding in hospital

[DeeDee3311]

I would like to bottle feed my LO when I'm in hospital, breast feeding wasn't for me last time.

I asked my midwife about how it all works and if they provide bottles etc and she's told me to speak to the hospital when I'm next there at 32 weeks. When I asked the midwife at the hospital a few weeks ago, she said ask my community midwife! So I'm none the wiser.

Do I bring my own bottles? Because surely they won't remain sterile. If so how do I wash and sterilise them in the hospital?

Do they provide milk? I want to use aptimil as that's what I used last time.

Do they have facilities to warm bottles up?

Sorry for the questions I just don't have a clue and am keen to know! Might be useless but I am due to give birth in birminghams Good Hope Hospital if anyone has been there?

when i had DD last year they provided little sterilised bottles that are use once then throw away. you have to provide your own milk, i wouldn't recommend powder i used some of those pre made bottles of aptamil until i got home.

Sycamore I agree that it can sometimes feel like mothers of bottle fed babies are punished. I was one! I remember feeling outraged that I couldn't collect advantage card points on my cow and gate formula! I don't think anyone was suggesting that the OP should be 'punished' for her choice by nutrition being withheld from her baby, it's a perfectly reasonable choice. I'm certain the hospital wouldn't do that, of course. It just seems to be the protocol that hospitals only provide a starter kit, I guess largely due to financial reasons. We went into hospital unexpectedly by ambulance when my DS was 3 months, he was bottle fed and in the panic I hadn't bought enough. They gave us ample ready made bottles and he was a guzzler, he needed two or three of those tiny ones by then and they kept bringing them no questions asked. I would have provided my own but we were rushed by ambulance and I didn't know we'd be kept in overnight.

Not sure about it being protocol, there's variation between trusts. Ours provides formula no questions asked, but there are clearly some that don't.

I do think they are punishing her. Firstly, the baby is the same as every other patient and entitled to be fed while an inpatient. In this case, that means formula. Secondly, if for some crazy reason, including financial, the hospital can't fulfil its duty, then why are they obscuring access to the information the OP needs? They are deliberately being evasive and refusing to answer her questions with precisely the aim of making life more difficult for formula feeding mothers in the hope that she will be so frustrated she will change her mind and improve their breastfeeding statistics. I think that is disgraceful. Her body, her breasts, her baby, her choice.