I'm still using the bottles from the NICU, but the babies are starting to eat more than 3 oz now so I need to get new ones.
How many do you have total? Also, what kind are you using? I was thinking of getting just standard evenflo bottles since they are easier to clean then the the dr. browns or Playtex Ventair.
tia!
Re: How many bottles do you have?
I think we had about 20 of the 4 oz. Dr. Brown bottles back then. I just washed them once a day and it wasn't bad at all.
Now I have 10 of the 8 oz. bottles. They only take 4 bottles a day now and we have 2 "extra".
I have the Playtex ventair and although I like the bottle and the babies do too...they leak like crazy!!!!!...so I wouldn't recommend them. Cleaning them is not so bad if you use the dishwasher
I have like 18 bottles and seems like the perfect amount for us (they eat 5 times during the day and one time per night). I also have the drop ins and I used those if we're going somewhere for a day or few days..
We use Medela bottles (I EP so it is compatible w/ my Medela pump). They are 5 oz. bottles. i have about 10-12 of those. We also have Evenflo (cheap at Walmart) but use the Medela nipples since my girls don't do well w/ the Evenflo nipples (we have 6 of those bottles). The rest are Dr. Brown.
HTH
I BF and bottle feed so I don't need nearly as many bottles as someone that will always bottle feed. We have I think 12 of the 8-oz Evenflo bottles (the ones that are $2.99 for 3), about 9 or 12 4oz bottles from the hospital (bottles from Similac), some drop-ins (that we haven't used yet) and some Medela bottles.
Wow, didn't seem like we had that many. I mainly use the Evenflo bottles to pump into, especially the first pump of the morning, I need more than the 5-6oz Medela bottles. Skip the expensive bottles IMO and start with the Evenflo cheapies. They work great for us, if for some reason they dont' work well for you, it's only a few dollars wasted. I just threw away a bunch of Vent Airs last week because they were leaking and just had way too many parts to keep up with when trying to take care of twins and a toddler.
When we started, we had ~30 4oz bottles and nipples, more than enough to cover us for 2 days uncase we fell behind on dishes.
Now they are on the 8oz bottles, we have ~16 (same thing, cover us for 2 days in case we fall behind on dishes).
We are using the plain old super cheap standard plastic evenflo bottles, they have worked great for us.
our boys drank 8 bottles/day so we had 18 bottles - one for each feed plus one extra set.
don't bother with the smaller sized bottles- you don't use them long.
some people do fine with less bottles - washing more during the day- we preferred to do one big wash at the end of the day.
We use the MAM bottles- love them... they have an air vent system- but not a ton of parts (like dr browns) and don't leak (like avent).