I'm hoping to BF, but I want to be able to pump and have someone else feed the twins too, and if I need to supplement, I want to have supplies on hand.
How many kinds of bottles and nipples did you start off with?
Also, if you supplemented with formula, did the LC or NICU nurse tell you what you'd need or did you just buy stuff to have on hand?
Re: how many bottles/nipples did you start off with?
We started with a full day's supply, just in case BFing didn't work out (and it didn't). We had 22 Dr. Brown's bottles (they all came with nipples).
We told the nurse that we wanted to use Similac and we took some of the 2 oz bottles home with us. I also had a stash of some at home as well.
After 2 rounds of IVF & 2 rounds of FET, we were blessed with identical twin girls!
we started with 16 evenflo bottles + gerber nuk latex nipples. that is what they got used to in the NICU, so we just stuck with those (thank God - saved a lot of money by trading in the dr. browns). i figured 16 is enough to get us through 24 hours without having to wash a bunch on no sleep with 2 screaming infants.
my babes came home on neosure so that's what we stuck with. we ended up switching to similac sensitive and they did the best with that. but my friend uses similac advance for her newborn daughter. i'd just ask the hospital what they recommend. GL!!
For the first 4 weeks, we fed them from these little test-tube-like Good Start cylinders with disposable nippes that the NICU sent us home with. Then we moved to level 1 nipples with the BorneFree bottles.
I exclusively pumped for the first month, and we have 16 of the BorneFree bottles - to me, that's plenty. We wash bottles once first thing in the morning (from all the night feedings), and once after DH gets from work (from the day feedings). If we had more bottles, it would just mean more dishes to wash as we'd just keep grabbing clean ones.
The only reason I'd get more is to stock grandma's/families' houses with a couple, if the babies will be spending any time there.
same