Formula Fed Babies- how do you feed their bottles in the night?

[SY2007]

Looking for your top tips on how to efficiently prepare formula bottles for the night feeds? Any gadgets or bottle warmers that help in the night?

Also best bottle recommendations please?

thanks!

Best advice I ever received - start the baby on room temperature formula. They then know no difference, and it is very easy to feed them on the move (or at night). I pre sterilized bottles and teats, and kept a kettle, and cooled boiled water in our room. Dump bottle and teats into bowl of boiling water, fish out, chuck in formula, add cooled boiled water, shake, feed.

Doubtless loads of other posters will comment on this as awful parenting, but it worked for us. Good luck, OP.

We used the tommee tippee perfect prep machine and it was a lifesaver. In terms of bottles, everyone I know used MAM but they made my daughter super gassy. She got on well with Lansinoh bottles.

I used the nuby rapid cool bottles….they’re amazing!!! Had a little set up in the bedroom of the rapid cool, a Milton steriliser and a kettle and that worked brilliantly for my twins night feeds. Also we used MAM bottles

Flak of boiling water, flask of cool boiled water and sterilised bottles with pre-measured formula scooped out. When ready just do a hot shot with the hot water, mix and then top up with the cooled boiled water. Perfect temp and ready in 30 secs. Essentially what the tommee tippee does

We used the perfect prep machine. We had one downstairs in the kitchen and one in our bedroom, so when baby woke for nightfeeds I just had to learn over, out the bottle with the pre measured out formula in the prep machine and pressed the button. Bottle done in 2 mins.

Can't remember how I did it with DD, but for DS I just cba to think about it so only gave him the ready made bottles at night. Open bottle of formula, pour into bottle and done. Not the cheapest way admittedly!

I used ready to feed formula. Quickest and easiest. I didn't warm it, DS was fine with room temeprature milk.

I suspect the advice has changed now, but when my kids were babies you could pre-prepare bottles and keep them in the fridge. So I would have 3 bottles in the fridge, and I’d warm it in the microwave. Obviously give it a good swirl and temperature check on my wrist before feeding it to my baby. If we were away somewhere without access to a fridge or microwave, I would have the sterilised bottles available, I would prepare water in bottles and once the water was the right temperature (or slightly warmer) I would put it into a flask to keep warm overnight. Then I would make up the bottles as needed using this water. I did the same when out and about (I had a powder dispenser with 3 sections you could pre-measure the formula into). It would lose a little of its heat, hence doing it slightly warmer, but on the whole it worked really well.

Never had any issues with sickness etc using either of these methods and we had 3 sons that we did this with. I did the same with expressed breast milk and the fridge/warming the bottle.

I have a fridge in bedroom (needed it during pumping days) so I keep already prepared bottles in the fridge. Baby would have cold bottles from the fridge in summer but now I warm the bottle in a bottle warmer which takes 5 minutes (with background crying).

Just used a Prep Machine day and night. We only had it downstairs as I tended to go down and feed on the sofa so as not to wake DH and I found it easier on my arms on the sofa (one arm goes quite dead from holding baby, so easier to lean that arm on the arm of the sofa!)

This is the one post you should ignore. The milk powder itself is the part that can be deadly. So you must put the correct temperature water with milk powder to kill any germs. Then are lots of ways to cool it as demonstrated by this thread.
When mine were newborn I used cartons of ready made in the night.
Then after three months I made up 24 hours worth of bottles in one go, cooled them and put them in the fridge. I would then warm in either the microwave or bowl of hot water and feed.

"Deadly"!

Yep, the advice was changed because babies died.

Please speak to your midwife/health visitor!!! A lot of these posts are very outdated with their advice and can lead to serious illness and in some cases death.

As someone who works with new parents and mums, please note that perfect prep machines are not recommended - they don't heat up the water to the correct temp and also often aren't cleaned properly so get a build up of bacteria/mould.

Also be wary of googling as a lot of studies are paid for by companies such as nestle/similac/danone etc.

We used ready to feed formula.

I use a prep machine at home which I know come with warnings.

The method I use away from home is with the Nuby rapidcool and a flask of boiled, still hot water, using the hot shot method:

1. Hot water into empty bottle up to the amount you want to make eg. 210ml/7oz
2. Pour out all but 10ml per oz of formula into the rapidcool. So for our example there would be 70ml hot water left in the bottle and 140ml in the rapidcool.
3. Add formula to bottle and shake
4. Shake rapidcool for about 2mins to cool water, or until the indicator light goes green
5. Add cooled water back into bottle, give it a shake, and it should be the right temp and ready to go.

Takes 2 mins once you've got used to what you're doing. And I prefer this way as i then don't have to sterilise the rapidcool.

I made them up in advance and kept them at the back of the fridge. Then before bed, into an insulated cool bag kept by the bed. I also bought a second microwave for £5 second hand that lived by the bed. Obviously making sure I have it a good swirl and tested it.

Baby stirring to feeding was usually less than 30 seconds, virtually no effort and I didn't even get out of bed

This is terrible advice that could make a baby sick. The point of boiling water is to kill the bacteria in the formula, it's not about the water being sterile.

The truth is formula is not wonderfully convenient for night feeds. You could use a prep machine but they don't get hot enough either and I wouldn't take that risk with a newborn.

I used ready-made, the bottles can be kept for 24 hours when opened so would just warm slightly if it was one that had been in the fridge.

Thank you so much everyone, really helpful!

a couple follow on questions:
Do you just leave used bottles on the side and wash in the morning?

what brand bottles are best?

For mine that was formula fed, we made the bottles early evening (with bedtime one), cooled and put in fridge. When we needed it, Dh got up and got it, warmed for a few minutes in boiled water from the kettle and brought up to me. I changed nappy during this time so we were ready to feed and get back to sleep.

Perfect prep machine. The whole business of raising babies is risk management, for some the miniscule risk of a baby getting sick from a properly cleaned and used prep machine is worth the ease and convenience.

So when DD was on multiple wake ups it would be the perfect prep. When she moved to 1 bottle per night (about 9/10 weeks for us) we used the ready made bottles and just took up a sterilised bottle and a ready made one and she had room temp ready made.

We used the mam bottles. Mainly for ease of sterilising (you can sterilise them in the microwave).

And yes, we have 6 bottles. We leave on the side and wash when we've used 5 (always have 1 ready to be used).

I used to make the bottles up before I went to bed and then pop them in the insulated bottle bags to keep them at a drinkable temperature. I would also dream feed mine when I got into bed (I know a lot of ppl don't like this) with a small bottle as a top up and I found they would usually wake once for a feed and be back off till the morning.

It worked for us but every baby is different and I would advise maybe speaking to your HV or Midwife as advice etc changes so often around these things too.

I used to rinse out the milk straight after feeding and then they went in the dishwasher.

I used MAM bottles. I used to leave them on the side till the morning and then put them in the dishwasher. I can't remember how many bottles I had, probably 10 or 12. I only ran the dishwasher once a day and I had enough bottles to never run out.