How many bottles should I buy?

[Shankairen]

I want to breastfeed solely for 6 weeks,and then introduce combination feeding. This means I will use a bottle only at night time. I understand that it does not always go to plan,and if I need to, I will buy more bottles.
However,say I will only be using a bottle at nighttime,do you think the Mam Starter Set will be enough? It comes with 2 160ml bottles with slow flow teats and 260ml bottles with medium flow teats.

There is also a 15 piece set,but I did not think I would need this much for only nighttime bottle feeding/only using the bottle if we go out/go to grandmas. Obviously,when I first start introducing the bottle I would be using the 160ml one with slow flow teats,so I would only have two. But surely I can use a slow flow teat on the 260ml bottle and just put less milk in it so technically I would have more bottles? I would buy more teats. Thank you!

A starter set sounds perfect, you can easily buy more if you need to. Yes you can put the teat on different size bottles. Good luck!

@betty98 thank you! I just didn't know whether I'd need more than two throughout the night,but if I do then I will buy more teats and put them onto the larger bottles. It sounds like a good idea now I've thought of it.

We just give one bottle a day and only have two bottles, just have to remember to sterilise each time.

How many bottles do babies usually take throughout the night then? At the start I could probably use the smaller ones and have 4,but then later on I'll only have 2 because the smaller ones will get to small to put all his milk in once he starts to drink more.

My advice would be to wait and see how many times your little one wakes during the night and adjust from there. It’s easy enough to buy more. Having a couple of bottles in the house is always useful just in case at the beginning.

I can’t remember where we were at by six weeks but an educated guess would be perhaps 4 feeds between 10pm and 6am? (As in one at ten, one at six, and two in between.)

But at 6am you may well want to breastfeed as your boobs will be huge by then!

I now exclusively bottle feed (not by choice) and DD is just six months. We have six bottles in the 260ml size. She also has colief added to all bottles so they have to be made up in advance so we do three for each 12 hour period. Six is the perfect number for us.

When I was still combination feeding we started with four and moved on to six when we moved up sizes I think.
They are great because you can wash and sterilise them individually in a pinch but also in a whole bunch as they stay sterilized for 24 hours.

A starter pack sounds perfect.

Also (completely unsolicited advice) I desperately wanted to exclusively breast feed and a lack of confidence in how much milk DD was getting combined with a return trip to hospital led to combination and eventually bottle feeding. If you have any concerns or struggles at all, contact the NCT breast feeding support - if I had contacted them for support earlier I fully believe I would still be full time breast feeding.

I'm hoping to Combi feed and bought the MAM bottle starter set the other day so hopefully those few bottles will be enough to start with.

Thank you so much!

this is great advice,it means a lot that you have told me this! Thank you! @zaffa

@Bellsx hopefully 👏🏼 I'm going to buy more soft flow teats so I would recommend to do the same. Otherwise when they're using the smaller bottles you'll only have two teats because ofc they can't use the medium flow teats just yet. And then I can switch them onto the bigger bottles and technically have four!! So excited!!

@Shankairen thank you for that, I'll order some more 😊

Would suggest a bottle completely overnight might not work when they are small and feeding lots still.

My baby is 4 weeks old, breastfed, but have introduced a small bottle (just 2oz/60ml) once every other day so he gets used to a bottle. When he has it he obviously then misses a feed from me and my boobs feel like they will explode if i haven't fed him. He usually feeds every 2hrs during the day, and so with a bottle after 3 1/2 hrs i am waking him to feed again as uncomfortable.

Anyway, just so you know that 4 bottles over night probably won't be very comfortable for you. My son usually feeds say 10pm, 2am, 4am, 6.30am. So a 2-4 hrs gap overnight. I could miss say the 4am feed and replace with bottle and would probably be ok, but all 4 wouldn't be possible. So having just 2 bottles for overnight would be fine.

FYI my breastfed baby will only take a bottle and dummy with latex teats, refuses the silicone ones.