Moving to formula & MAM bottles

[Dogt17]

Hi for medical reasons I’ve had to move my son onto formula. He’s now 5 months old and until last week he was EBF. I also breastfed my dd1 until she was 18 months so I’ve never had to make up a bottle in my life. This last week I’ve been using the ready made bottles with teats to make sure my son would take to formula before I went out & started buying bottles, teats, milk powder etc. Could I have some advice please on how to go about making bottles? Especially in advance, how do you go out and have bottles available? Are there any tips for speeding up preparation etc. I’ve bought the self sterilising MAM bottles but find them confusing too! When they’ve been sterilised it says they can be left as they are for 48hours but they are full of water so do I just leave the water in there until I need them? Doesn’t seem very hygienic to me leaving water sat in a bottle for 2 days. Plus how can I take out a sterilised bottle if it’s not screwed back together? Any help would be appreciated as I feel clueless to the whole thing at the minute & it’s starting to stress me out. Thank you

PerfectPrep machine and a cold water steriliser are my two tips!

Posted too soon ... I find the basic Milton sterilising units the most convenient to use v other fancy types of steriliser. Just chuck everything in there and change water/tablets every 24 hours.

I use the MAM bottles. You can just tip the water out and assemble the bottles ready for the day. But I only have enough bottles for 1 day, so even if the water is left in sometimes they are not in for that long that it is unhygienic.

When I take them out I assemble them first, keep the bottle cap on and just pop them in my nappy bag.

I would also recommend the perfect prep machine. It's a life saver if you're formula feeding.

From what I'm aware with those bottles is you sterilise then and then can put them in the fridge (to keep them sterilised) for 48 hours. But get rid of the water first.

You're only putting 20ml in the bottom, so they shouldn't be full of water. If there is any left then I tip it out before assembling. There are several ways you can do it:

Personally I make several bottles & keep in fridge until needed. I give a quick zap in microwave then shake well. (Although this is not what NHS recommends!) If you're heating with hot water you need to unscrew the top or it will pull water up into the bottle. Bottles can be left 24hr in fridge, 4hr in cool bag with ice pack, 2hr on side, 1hr once babies had a drink.

You will find formula babies feed at much more regular intervals so you can just make up 1hr before needed.
You can put 60ml boiling in, add formula, then add 120ml cooled boiled water from fridge.

You can get a perfect prep machine.

When out & about I either take one ready made or get some hot water from a cafe & add powder when out. Or buy small ready made carton if I'm going somewhere for a long time with no facilities.

It all sounds really confusing to begin but it gets easier when you're used to it!

We have a nuby rapid cool when out and about which we take out with us along with a flask of boiled water which we boil just before we leave and some powder in a box. We mix it all in the nuby, shake and it cools the formula to the right temp in about 4 mins then tip into mam bottle.

My DD didn’t get on with the MAM bottles and gulped loads of air, so you might want a back up sterilising method in case you switch bottles. We had a steam steriliser but switched to UV - not all bottles recommend UV sterilising though.

For out and about, I would make up a bottle before leaving the house and cool it using an ice block en route, to maximise the time it lasted. For longer trips, I bought a little thermos flask for water and one of those powder dispensers. I also bought a travel insulated soup pot to fill with ice. When out, you can make up the bottle using the hot water the cool either in the insulated pot or ask for some water wherever you are and add the ice. DD is still quite small though (less than 3 months) and so I’m fairly paranoid about not following formula instructions- everyone I know just makes the bottles in advance and keeps them cold. We also carry a readymade one in case of disaster.

I’m pretty much exclusively formula feeding - albeit reluctantly - and it’s taken me a while to get my head around it. My top tip is to use a whiteboard pen to write the time you made the bottle up on the bottle itself so you don’t have to use any headspace remembering.

We used a perfect prep machine and sterilised the MAM bottles in the microwave bags you can get - brilliant as can take/ sterilise anywhere.
Then drained the water out, put the bottles together and left them in the bag til needed (made enough up for the day).
DS had an anti reflux formula so had to be made up at the time of use, not in advance so I used to take 2 flasks of water out with me to make them up - one of boiling water and the other cooled boiled water and basically mimicked the perfect prep machine when making them up.
If baby is on regular formula you could buy it ready made for ease when out and about.

Just tip the water out and assemble them. They can go in a bag like that as nothing is touching inside the bottle which is the bit that needs to stay sterile. I use perfect prep machine at home. When I go out I make up a couple of bottles in advance. Baby takes it room temp and I'm not too bothered about the guidelines of they need making up there and then. I would probably do 6 hours in advance max. Never been out longer than that in public though. If I'm someone's house for the day as baby eats every 2.5 to 3 hours I just make up a bottle from the kettle every 2 and leave it to cool, give it to her when needed.

This post is from August last year! She's probably sorted now!