Breastfeeding Bottles

[Christophe123]

First post here so hi everyone

Just after some opinions on the best "breastfeeding" bottles. I want to help my wife getting up during the night etc but we can't decide on a bottle set to buy (tommy tippee, avent etc). I was just after some opinions on what everyone else has used and how was the experience/why did you choose it in the first place?

Cheers

Used mam for DD1; they claim 95% of all breastfed babies take them. Unfortunately DD2 falls into the 5% so far...

I would rather buy one bottle at a time than a set, and see how you get on.

I'm still cooking a baby so can't really help - but I hear lots of rave reviews about Avent bottles or Dr Browns. I would steer clear of Tommee Tippee from what I've read!

I didn't like avent teats and used tommee tippee ones instead. I would buy individually and see which they prefer

How old is your baby? It is really hard to do mixed feeding at first, getting breastfeeding established can be hard work!

What I would say is that feeding is such a small part of their lives, and that what really helped me was my DH being there for every other bit of my baby's life - doing the nappies, letting me have a shower in piece ( or even more amazingly a bath), taking the baby downstairs in the morning and letting me lie in, cooking me breakfast etc etc.

This is absolutely not to say that mixed feeding can't be fantastic (it was with my first son!) but that honestly the breastfeeding in the night bit was ok, it was all the other stuff that could be made so much easier by DH. We found the dr brown bottles good.

We use Tommy Tippett, Medela & MAM when giving bottles to ours. The Medela & MAM ones are very fiddly...a fair bit of crying over spilt milk (expressed) due to not quite getting it together properly when sleep deprived! I recall we have such a variety because we were trying to solve DS1's colic: it turned out he was tongue-tied & gulping air so none of them helped particularly.

They are all fine. A load of marketing rubbish about this one or that one being closer to a real nipple. Your baby will get used to whichever one you persevere with.

We had to mix feed DD from 3 days old until a month or so, and then she had the odd bottle of expressed milk or formula if I was going to be away from her for a feed. We got on really well with the Mothercare own-brand bottles. She never got confused between bottle and boob, and took to the bottles very easily. The offset teat stops them being able to gulp down air too.
I agree with PP who said maybe don't buy a whole set as different babies have different preferences!
Also, although helping out with the night feeds will be great when your DW has established the breastfeeding (usually supply takes 5wks to establish), initially she will need to pump whilst a bottle is fed to build supply so if you do a bottle at night it'll mean you both up getting no sleep. The night feeds are the most important as this is when the body makes most of the milk, and feeding stimulates supply. I had to mix feed as my milk took so long to come in my DD lost a load of weight. She was trying so hard to get some milk she cut me to pieces so I was forced to give her a couple of bottles a day to give myself a chance to heal. Whilst DH gave her a bottle, I expressed to stimulate supply (so I didn't 'miss a feed') but was (initially) unable to get anywhere near the amount she needed out so topped up with formula. Expressing just isn't as effective as actually breastfeeding in the early days both in terms of building supply and producing enough to bottle feed purely expressed milk. It was a nightmare and took until the end of the first month before my body caught up with her needs. Next time I will be avoiding bottles if possible for the first few weeks. You don't say how old your baby is, so if they are past the newborn stage obviously ignore the above paragraph!

I tried a few and DS seemed to get on with Lansinoh bottles best.

We tried several and DD clicked with the lansinoh ones straight away, despite struggling with all the other brands.

The medala calma was the one my breast fed baby took to best.

Thanks for the responses everyone

We have been out and about today and think we have decided on the Munchkin Latch bottles and have bought to try. Anyone have any experience with them?