BABY born 515 826904 EA Bottle with Cap, Multicolor

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Once sterilised, leave the bottles inside the steriliser until they’re needed and make sure you have clean hands when you assemble them. With cute animals on the bottles and a great price, Nuk's First Choice+ bottles come with a surprising amount of clever features and come highly recommended by Mumsnetters. Volume markings: Are they clear and easy to read? This will become much more important at 4am – trust us. You may hear that you should keep the teat full of milk to avoid swallowing air. However where the milk flow is too fast and not in your baby's control, it is more likely to cause indigestion or gas (Kellymom, 2020). Anecdotally, babies whose parents use paced feeding suffer less from gas (Herman, 2021). Parents who bottle feed find that they may need to move onto using larger bottles as their baby grows and milk consumption increases. Every baby is different so there isn’t a set age for when this should happen (Unicef, 2019). It’s important to follow your baby’s feeding cues and signs that they need more milk, such as finishing each feed and seeming to want more (NHS, 2015; Unicef, 2016). What type of feeding bottle is best?

Often this category of bottles overlaps with the eco-friendly category. They are bottles designed to last long after the baby years, to toddlerhood and often beyond.

BABY born Brother

Bottle feeding might be the right option for you if you're struggling to breastfeed, want to combination feed or share the feeding load with your partner. When working out which is the best baby bottle for your baby, the first thing to remember is that different babies take to different bottles, so if your baby doesn’t like one bottle, don't give up. You also might get on very well with a particular brand of breast pump and want to buy the matching bottle and use them together.

Finally, if you’re using bottles with expressed breast milk, you’ll need a way to express – see our roundup of the best breast pumps here. The WHO recommends that babies are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their life and that breastfeeding continues where possible up to two years. Accordingly, bottle manufacturers invest a great deal of research into designing a teat that mimics breastfeeding as closely as possible, so you can express and bottle feed without nipple confusion. Sterilising bottles is recommended for babies under a year because bacteria can easily grow in any milk remaining on the bottle or teats (Unicef, 2019). Babies are more vulnerable to these bacteria. So, what makes them so good? Vented bases help babies to drink at their own pace which reduces colic, while the SkinSoft silicone teats are designed to feel familiar and more like a nipple. According to MAM’s research, this makes them accepted by 94% of babies – hence their reputation.Once they’re older and used to bottle-feeding, you could move to a medium flow. Just follow your baby’s lead to see what teat is right for them. Some babies prefer to stay on the slow flow teats for many months. You can also buy variflow teats where the flow rate can be varied by changing the angle of the teat (Which? 2019). Once we had a shortlist of 15, our parent-tester Katrĩna, a mum of two, spent several weeks washing bottles repeatedly, filling them, sterilising them, and testing their solidity and safety. As well as your bottle of choice, you’ll need a way to sterilise the bottles – this is easily done with a standalone steam steriliser, a sterilising box placed in the microwave or sterilising tablets in cold water. If you’re making up a lot of formula, an automatic formula prep machine can save you a lot of time and fiddling about.

Keep an eye on the teat to make sure it’s always full of milk, not air (this helps prevent swallowing too much air, which can lead to reflux or colic). If the pressure in the bottle builds up so the teat goes flat, the NHS recommends inserting a little finger gently in the corner of your baby’s mouth to release it. If you’re planning to breastfeed it isn't necessary to buy bottles ‘just in case’. Over 90% of maternity units in the UK are now Baby Friendly Accredited, which means a midwife on the infant feeding team should be able to support you if you do have any difficulties with breastfeeding straight after birth (UNICEF 2017). They’ll help you with hand-expressing your colostrum and feeding it to your baby using a spoon, syringe or feeding cup (Unicef 2017). Find out whether your maternity unit is accredited here.Keeping your baby upright should minimise this and angled bottles make the correct positioning easier. 4. Eco-friendly From the best breast pumps to the best changing bags, part of Mumsnet's mission is to take the confusion out of the choices new parents have to make. We research, test and review products that make parents' lives easier - offering honest, authentic recommendations with options to suit every family and budget. The small parts found in an anti-colic bottle should, of course, be kept out of baby’s reach. How do I make up a bottle? Before sterilising, all bottles and teats need to be washed, either by hand or in the dishwasher (NHS, 2018). If washing by hand, you will need a separate brush for cleaning bottles and teats (NHS, 2019b). When should I throw away my baby’s bottle? Many bottle manufacturers claim their designs help reduce colic – an uncomfortable condition not fully understood by doctors that could be down to trapped wind, indigestion or physical difficulties with feeding.