Over time you can be an expert on bottle feeding. These tips can help you get there sooner.
When you are a parent, you have a lot of your plate. You have extra duties from diapers and clothes to bottles and bonding. While you wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, you have to find ways to make it easier to achieve without taking away from your time with your little one.
Over time you will be able to do all of your tasks with ease. Here are some tips from other parents that will help you get to that point faster.
Preparation is Key
Every evening when your baby is asleep and you are getting ready for bed yourself, make sure that you have all of the bottles and nipples clean. Your baby formula needs to be in a cool, dry place, so it makes sense to have your bottles close to that as well. They can be on the drying rack or already assembled and ready to go. You can even portion out the formula powder so that you only have to add water and mix.
Want to take it one step further? You can actually prepare enough formula for a 24-hour period in advance. If kept in the coldest part of the refrigerator, you can just pour and warm. A bigger pitcher of formula means that you can prepare a large quantity without making a mess around the smaller opening in the bottle.
If you find that you are on the go whether it is shopping or visiting with friends, you can be ready without fully preparing the formula by measuring out enough for a bottle before you leave. Individual plastic containers or dry bottles work well for this.
Organization is Awesome
When you have everything in place, it is so much more efficient when something comes up on demand. When your baby has a wet diaper, you have all of your tools in place at the changing table. The same should be true for your baby's bottle supplies.
If you start with the same brand of bottles, you can interchange many of the pieces to it such as lids and rings. Sometimes they can stack on top of each other to take up less space.
Washing all of your bottles at the same time can also help with your organization. You use the same soap and water for the same equipment, and then you don't have to worry about oily residue from your pots or tomato sauce stains from your dishes. They can all dry on the same rack and help you with your preparations for the next step. To make sure that there is nothing rancid when you start cleaning, rinse out the milk and squeeze the nipples so that there is nothing sitting around until it is cleaning time.
