For those who sleep upstairs

I am trying to figure out how to handle nighttime bottle feeding for my girls without having to run downstairs to get the bottles from the fridge and heat and run back up stairs. How do you handle this? Do you just mix up bottles of formula on demand upstairs? Take a cooler of bottles up and have an upstairs baby bottle warmer? Run downstairs? Up until this point my dh and have been sleeping downstairs on the couch with the girls in the pnp. It was convenient being downstairs but it is time for us to go upstairs now. I just need to figure how to handle the bottle part.

 

I would leave a couple of bottles with room temperature water upstairs ALONG with the powder formula. All I had to do was add the scoops to the bottle and shake and it was ready.

 

When DD was getting up a lot to eat, I got some ice packs and my bottle holder cooler bag and put them in there. She drinks her formula cold. She always has for some reason so I dont know what to tell you about warming them up but it really helped me to have my cooler of bottles right there with me. Also, when she first came home b/f I started mixing formula in batches, I would just take 4-5 bottles of water and the can of formula and put on my nightstand. They co-slept with us so I made sure I had everything so I did not have to constantly get up. I had all the diapers/wipes/desitin/ ect. that I would need to last me through the night right on the nightstand. Helped a lot during the first 3 months.

 

We did what pp did. Had bottled water upstairs and formula, and mixed on demand. Worked well. Because they are in their carseats, we just bring them down and use tap water and make them then. I could do breastmilk, but this way I don't have to heat bottles, and I still have breast milk. That one or two bottles of formula helps me with the breast milk!

 

QUOTE(**Diane** @ Feb 3 2008, 09:02 PM) [snapback]603815[/snapback]
I would leave a couple of bottles with room temperature water upstairs ALONG with the powder formula. All I had to do was add the scoops to the bottle and shake and it was ready.


Ditto! That is what I always did too when mine were waking in the middle of the night to eat.

 

QUOTE(idtwinstx @ Feb 3 2008, 10:16 PM) [snapback]603851[/snapback]
Ditto! That is what I always did too when mine were waking in the middle of the night to eat.



Same here!

 

Right now the Twins and I are sleeping in the living room, we put the extra crib and changing table there. But we are thinking about moving to the upstairs, I can not remember the last time I got to sleep in my bed. I am concerned about the nighttime feedings and also waking up my other 2 kids. I think this next weekend I am going to try and be brave and have them sleep in their room. We will see.

 

Here was my upstairs set up:

Bottles pre-filled with water
A small can of formula
A supply of infant spoons
A bottle warmer

When a baby woke up, I scooped the formula into a bottle, stirred, and set it in the warmer. Then I changed the baby. When I was done, the bottle was warm. The other baby got a bottle of breastmilk that I had pumped at the last pumping session. After the girls were 2 months old, they drank room-temp formula and I didn't have to warm the bottle anymore.

I had a tupperware container that I threw the dirty bottles and spoons in when we were done and then I carried them to the kitchen in the morning.

 

We also did exactly as you said...took a little cooler up to the bathroom counter, along w/ the warmer and the premeasured formula in the little formula containers by Munchkin. When they got to be about 2 or three months, we didn't even bother warming, just used room temp food. I always packed enough to get us through night feedings and the first of the morning bottle. Good luck!

 

We would just use water from the tap up stairs in the bathroom. My daughter didnt really like her milk to warm so the tap water worked great. Then we just had the formula in the bathroom ready.

 

I had a bottle warmer that had a cooler that fit two bottles with it.

 

We used RTF formula so it had to be kept refridgerated and it had to be heated. I was going CRAZY running up and down half asleep every 2-3 hours in the middle of the night so I finally bought a mini fridge and microwave that I kept in their room. It made life SOOOOOOO much better for me. I know not everyone believes in microwaving bottles but I am deffinately not one of them. As long as you shake the bottle thoroughly it's fine. I never had a problem from the day they were born until the day we moved to cold milk sippy cups and it was nice that their bottle was warmed and ready to go within 30 seconds.

 

We actually bought a mini fridge for 20 bucks at a yard sale and put it in our room. I take the baby out of their room, warm bottle to room temp in bathroom sink, feed and put baby back in their room. Works great. I find I spent more time trying to shake all the lumps out of the bottle when I did water and powder mixing as they woke. We use the playtex drop-ins and find it harder to mix in those bottles.

 

My boys like their bottles room temp or cold. So at night I have a formula dispenser (BRU) that has 4 sections in it. Jakes formula has more powder so I just wrote his initials on two of the sections in Sharpie. I prefill the bottles with our filtered water and keep them upstairs. I bring 2 bottles for each baby and the formula dispenser. It's all I need till the morning!

 

I did the run up and downstairs thing. I would go and get the bottles out of the fridge, bring them up and put them in a bowl of hot water while I changed the girls then we would feed.

 

If your babies only eat warm bottles, you should warm up some water, put it in a thermos and take it upstairs with you and then you can just add the powder and not bother with bottle warmers and stuff in the middle of the night.

 

We bring up two bottle for each baby. One bottle of water and one of the correct amount of powder. We also have two bottle warmers, one upstairs and one downstairs. When a baby wakes up we just dump the water into the powder, give it a shake, and for DD(DS takes his without being warmed) we warm it in the warmer real quick and then feed her.

If you usually premake the bottles and then warm them you can get one of the warmers that has a cooler attached and then just put the premade bottle in the cooler and pull it out and warm it.

I did not read the pp so I hope I was not to repetative.

Amy

 

We used these:

http://www.onestepahead.com/catalog/produc...roductId=462758

They were great. I had 6 of them and I would prepare them that night and put them on their dresser. The boys were used to room temp water, so I didn't worry about heating them up.

 

We put bottles in a cooler and had a bottle warmer upstairs. When a baby woke up, we'd pop a bottle in the warmer and change their diaper. By the time we were done the bottle was ready. In the morning, I'd load all the empties in the cooler and take it downstairs. For awhile we mixed formula with tap water at each feeding, but there just wasn't room for all the stuff in our bathroom.

 

Every evening we would pack a basket with all our feeding supplies for the evening and take it upstains and put it in the bathroom. We used those travel formula dispensers and filled those up with the appropriate scoops. We just used luke warm tap water from the bathroom. Our bottles were all set up so that all we had to do was add water and formula and we were feeding hungry babies.