Steriliser and bottles

[Junosmum]

Ok. So I plan to ebf. To be fair I'm not holding out much hope since not a single woman in my family has been able to (my great gran had to use a wet nurse!) In living memory. However, I can only try. With this in mind do I need to buy a steriliser and bottles? If bfing I don't plan to express. I figure if I don't have the stuff in house there'll be less temptation to give up? Or am I being stupid?

Yes, buy a couple of bottles and a cold water steriliser (only cheap).

I had the same plan as you and it didn't work out. I ended up being able to mix feed which was a good compromise for us, but having them saved the hassle of going out and buying all the stuff when I was already at peak stress! And it if does work out, you haven't spent too much!

All the best

You can always return them if you don't need them . We have a microwave steriliser that was about £17. We bought it so that I could express (and go to bed leaving my partner to feed the baby!). As it happens, we're now mix feeding because he needs some extra feeding up. We also sterilise dummies, medicine syringes, spoons, anything really.

I am planning ebf, not bought any bottles as can get from either local supermarket or amazon prime. So unless live very rurally or dont have a car dh or family could pop out?

Mam bottles are great. They sterilise in the microwave without a separate steriliser,you just add a bit of water.

I would probably get a couple of bottles and not bother with a steriliser. A few Milton tablets or a boil sterilise will do you until you can nip out.

Why have women in your family had difficulty? Sometimes those difficulties can be genetic but often they were expectation/societal norm created - e.g a lot of women will have supply problems when their hv has told them only to nurse every 4 hours. Good luck.

Self sterilising Mam bottles.

You'll probably use bottles / steriliser at some point anyway for expressing, so it won't be too much of a waste. I never had a steriliser but used tablets for the few times I used bottles.

If you don't have the formula in then it won't be as easy to give in if that's a worry, as you'd still need to go out to buy that If needed. And formula is the bit that's easiest to get hold of on a Sunday evening etc as any corner shop would sell it.

I did EBF DS for fully 5 months before even introducing formula but did express do I could leave someone else to feed if I needed a sleep etc. I had one small bottle and teat, and a basin and bottle of Milton. I mainly used the basin and Milton to sterilise my breast pump stuff though.

I would have a bottle, teat, and one bottle of readymade formula (or express a few oz and freeze) for emergencies.

Thanks. I think a cheap steriliser and bottle will be purchased.

No don't bother, I didn't as planned on ebf and didn't think in my wildest dreams it would go wrong. But it did and I had to top up we didn't have a single bottle, tin of formula or steriliser in the house buy we managed by grabbing some on way home from hospital and sterilised in boiling water until we got ourselves sorted.

It was fine and baby survived. Amazon prime is a godsend for stuff like that