Bottles & Nipples & Pumps, Oh My!

I started to write a comment to answer Hopeful Mother's questions about bottles and such, and realized it'd be better addressed here, rather than writing a book in the comments.

Let me preface my advice with the disclaimer that different things work for different babies. What worked for my twins might be wrong for yours. You often have to try out different brands, products, etc. before you find what works for you.

And obviously, breastfeeding makes all of this a moot point, and is totally ideal. But I'll be honest. Many (not all) mothers of twins find exclusively breastfeeding twins to be an exhausting and daunting task and find that supplementing (either with pumped milk or formula) gives a little bit of respite. I breastfed / pumped for four months, and still ended up with all this stuff!

Hopeful Mother sounds pretty darn prepared. I had one bottle 'starter kit' and that was it, as I didn't anticipate preemies that couldn't nurse and five weeks in the NICU.

I started with plain old Avent bottles, and really liked them. I bought an "adapter kit," made by Avent, that let me pump directly into the bottles. (I used a hospital grade Medela pump). I started out with the small size (4 oz), wide-necked bottles, and moved up to the larger 8-oz bottles as needed. All the caps/nipples work with both.

I had two very gassy babies, and one with really bad reflux, and when it finally got really bad, I was willing to try anything. Enter the slender Dr. Brown's bottles, which are reputed to alleviate gas/air bubbles. I found that they absolutely helped with my twins' symptoms. However ... it's a bit like setting up a crack lab, what with all the bottles, tubes, stoppers, etc. These bottles take the smaller, standard size nipples.

Personally, I preferred using the Avent bottles for a number of reasons. (1) They were easier to hold on to, and I imagine once the babies were old enough, they'd be easy for them to hold on to, also. (2) Avent makes more accessories, like the pump adapters, sippy cup inserts, etc. (3) It was easier to mix formula right in the Avent bottle, since it's roomier. (4) Less parts to wash! (in comparison to the Dr. Browns). But then again, they just didn't work for gassy, refluxy babies.


I think it's absolutely okay to use second-hand bottles, just make sure to run them through the 'sanitize' cycle on your dishwasher before use. I might invest in new nipples, though, just to be on the safe side, and make sure I'm using the right flow levels -- it's awful hard to read the tiny numbers imprinted on the side of the nipple.

In terms of pacifiers, I consider myself lucky. They started the babies on the very small Soothie pacifiers in the NICU, and they came in handy ... whenever they had to do a potentially painful or uncomfortable procedure on the babies (inserting a pik line or something similar), they dipped the pacifier in a glucose solution, and it calmed/distracted the babies. One nurse called it "morphine for preemies."

They came home with the pacifiers, and used them to go to sleep and to soothe. But they were rarely disturbed or awoken when the pacifier fell out .. it never was a problem. We never had "nipple confusion" problems. And then one day, it just wasn't necessary anymore, and away they went. Maybe around five or six months old? But regardless, during the time they used them, I stocked up so that I had at least four at any given time or location.

So, I think that answers all Hopeful Mother's questions (and probably more than she wanted to know). In my opinion (and in hindsight), I think the best advice is to be prepared, and be open to trying different things. I think this applies to breastfeeding, pumping, and bottle feeding, but also to how you raise your child/children in general. We all think we're going to do things a certain way, and maybe we will. Maybe we won't. Maybe we'll learn from our experiences, and those of all the mothers before us, try things that are beyond our comfort zone, and stretch ourselves. Because children do nothing if not make us more than flexible.