Bottle feeding in the night

[AliveAndSleeping]

Currently, 5 month old is combination fed. If he wakes up in the night I usually breastfeed him first and then prepare a bottle of formula. I'm planning to stop breastfeeding soon but am a bit confused about how to prepare a bottle in the night without letting him cry for very long.

During the day I use hot water from a thermos, mix half the required amount of water with formula and then add the second half of required amount of boiled cooled down water. This results in the formula being at exactly the temperature that ds likes and takes only about 5 minutes. However, the water in the thernos only stays above 70 C for about 4h so even if I fill it up just before going to bed it might not last long enough for ds' next feed. Boiling water in the kettle takes ages especially if it needs to cool down a bit first (according to NHS websites and manufacturer's instructions you should wait for 30min bit I only wait for ten minutes or so). So in the night I mostly use ready made formula but that also takes quite long to warm up, ie about 5-10 minutes. I use mam bottles. Other bottles might be quicker but he rejects everything else.

I think now breastfeeding him first takes the edge off his hunger a little bit but once I stop breastfeeding I'm not sure what to do. Any ideas?

@AppleKatie

We used ready made and DC drank it cold or room temperature whichever it happened to be.

Maybe mine were unusually flexible (ha on this single issue maybe!) but I found that often people were warming on the assumption that that is the right thing to do rather than necessity so do remember that cold milk won’t harm your baby and give that a go.

As a newborn (started topping up with formula at 5 days as instructed by midwife as he wasn't putting on enough weight) Ds drank formula at all temperatures, even straight from the freezer. At two months or so he suddenly started refusing cold and room temperature milk. Sigh...

Thanks for all the replies everyone!!

You can also buy a kettle with a 70 degrees button so you can use the water straight away.
Otherwise yes perfect prep is your friend!

@LapinR0se

You can also buy a kettle with a 70 degrees button so you can use the water straight away. Otherwise yes perfect prep is your friend!

Never heard of that. Will look into it!!

What's the temperature of the milk when it comes out from the perfect prep?.is it to.temperature or warmer?

Sounds like it would be easiest to just breastfeed until night weaning. If it's only twice a night why make more work for yourself?

It sounds like there's been some weight concerns? My son was terrible for this. They will move around the centile line especially during growth spurts but as long they are roughly following it it's fine.

When you start weaning you can also give high calorie foods such as coconut yoghurt and avocado to help with the weight gain. Made a huge difference to my son.

We night weaned at 9 months when feeding to sleep stopped working. We did controlled crying and it took 3-4 nights for him to not wake up in the night again.

The hot shot is 70 degrees and the other water is room temp so overall it’s a warm bottle of milk from the PP.

This is the kettle with variable temp www.argos.co.uk/product/9186248

@AliveAndSleeping

What's the temperature of the milk when it comes out from the perfect prep?.is it to.temperature or warmer?

Couldnt say exactly. Warm and drinkable. A mixture of 70 degrees and room temp water.

I'm just going to put this out there - HV wasn't keen on perfect prep machine as there are lots of little pipes which can grow mould. I never looked any further into this, as the thought instantly put me off but it might be worth investigating/ buying brand new instead of second hand....and when you're in that territory you might as well just buy a fancy kettle with a 70degrees button. You'll be weaning soon anyway and at least you'll use your kettle long afterwards 😉 Coffee is much better at 70 degrees too you know!

We don't use mam bottles but heat 8oz for 50 secs but our microwave is a bit rubbish so that's probably too long for most.. Suggest starting at 20 and adding 10secs until you figure out what's right for you

What women have been doing for years is as follows:

Ready made formula and put in microwave for 20 seconds shake and off you go - if need be bring the bottle and microwave up stairs

OR

Perfect prep machine been around for years bring it upstairs too for night with your bottles

OR

The flask and don’t worry about the 4 hours cooling thing

Or finally ready made in the fridge and whack in mircowave takes two mins

Personally I used to do flask with my eldest and perfect prep with youngest

@AliveAndSleeping

Sorry forgot to add that theoretically I'd have to let the water cool in the kettle for about 30min (according to midwives and health visitors at least for ten minutes if not 30) so actually it would take even longer.

You’re supposed to use all hot water to make the bottle and then let it cool. If you’re ignoring that bit of guidance (and thus not adding enough hot water to be sure any bacteria is seen off) I’m not sure why you’d follow the advice you’ve quoted so strictly. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is one of the criticisms of the perfect prep machine, btw.

As a newborn (started topping up with formula at 5 days as instructed by midwife as he wasn't putting on enough weight) Ds drank formula at all temperatures, even straight from the freezer. At two months or so he suddenly started refusing cold and room temperature milk. Sigh...

I expressed all of DD’s milk for a year. As if that wasn’t enough of a faff she only liked it hotter than body temperature as well.

This is why I stuck with bf. Take baby into my bed lift top up and she’s helps herself and I go back to sleep. I’ve gave my eldest a pouch of beef stew baby food when he was about 7 months if he was still hungry after a bf.

That’s not right. You are supposed to make sure the powder comes into contact with 70-degree water to kill bacteria. Once that’s done then you can top up with cooled boiled (aka sterile) water.

@LapinR0se

That’s not right. You are supposed to make sure the powder comes into contact with 70-degree water to kill bacteria. Once that’s done then you can top up with cooled boiled (aka sterile) water.

You’re supposed to use all 70+ degree water and then let the bottle cool from there.

The “hot shot” isn’t enough in volume for the amount of powder.

No mention of cold water on the manufacturer’s instructions.

Tommy Tippee really pulled a number here!

Make it up with hot water and then store in the back of the fridge. Get out and warm up when you need to feed. That's safer than any method which you might get wrong when half asleep, resulting in scalding or incorrectly made formula.

the instructions say you should boil at least one litre. I assume it's to avoid lime scale from the bottom of the kettle.

No, it's just because then the timing makes sense - it takes 1 litre of just boiled water about 30 mins to cool down to 70 in a 20degree room.

If you boil less water it will cool down quicker.

I understand feeling anxious about following instructions to the letter, I did too when we were mixed feeding. It was like because I was not "perfectly breastfeeding" I had to formula feed "perfectly" in order for it to be acceptable. Then I realised that everything is about reducing risk, not eliminating it and it's really fine to make a trade off between convenience and risk especially as the UK guidance is multi-layered (washed and sterilised bottles, clean prep utensils/area/hands, high standards for powdered formula, hot water to make up, controlled temperature/time limits when storing made up formula) which means even if you mess up one or even a couple of parts of the guidance, it's likely that the 3, 4, 5, 6+ other parts you have followed will keep the risk very low still.

I made all bottles for the day up in the morning for the whole day so in the nught i just had to grab one out the fridge. Most important thing is for the powder to hit the hot water to sterilise it.

By that age i only used to sterilise bottles once a week, dishwasher clean majority of time.

I also never used to warm the bottles of milk so that was much easier.

@LapinR0se

That’s not right. You are supposed to make sure the powder comes into contact with 70-degree water to kill bacteria. Once that’s done then you can top up with cooled boiled (aka sterile) water.

Huh? So I use water that is hotter than 70deg to mix the formula in to kill bacteria in the formula. I then add the remaining cold water to the mixture (by this time the bacteria should have been killed off).

Formula kettle

uneeqbaby.com/collections/multi-functional-formula-kettle

Possibly my best baby purchase!

The first thing to remember is that given the emphasis on breastfeeding, there is no incentive for health visitors/nhs to make it easy to formula feed. The more tricky and impractical it is to make up bottles, the more attractive breastfeeding seems.

Secondly, risk elimination isn't possible, the best you can do is risk reduction, and it's for you to decide how far you go with that. The manufacturer guys to extreme lengths with their recommendations so you can't sue if you deviate (just like with most vitamins your are technically supposed to discuss with a doctor before your start...). The NHS had no reason to make it easier for reason 1 above.

You could eliminate the rush of your child being in a car accident, for example, by never leaving home, but that's not practical, or proportionate. Using appropriate car seats and driving safely is a good compromise.

The practical difference in safety in a country like the UK between following the manufacturer instructions and making and cooling bottles in advance is tiny. The difference in ease of making a bottle is huge.

I also used to use a microwave to heat - gift it a good swirl to mix and always test it on your wrist. The reason is not recommended is because of parents in the past who heated it to scalding and didn't check it and gave literally boiling milk to their child, with tragic results. They don't recommend using a microwave because a small proportion of people won't do it sensibly.

I kept cooked bottles in a chilled bag by the bed, with a microwave in the room (second hand for a fiver). Baby waking to milk was about 30 seconds and neither is us left bed 😊

nuby-uk.com/rapidcool-i53

Nuby do a rapid cool flask which follows NHS guidelines & it cools the milk in 2-5 minutes. Heard good things about it!