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Bottle Feeding

Bottles & Teats

The core kit, and the part babies have the strongest opinions about. Start here before you worry about everything else on the shelf.

Baby Bottle

The one non-negotiable on this list. Bottles come in different sizes (small for newborns, larger as feeds grow), different materials (plastic, glass, silicone) and different shapes, including angled and wide-neck styles. Babies can be surprisingly opinionated about which bottle they'll accept, so start with one or two rather than a full matching set of a brand your baby might veto.

Bottle Teats

Teats come in flow rates, from slow for newborns through to fast for older babies, and the right speed matters: too fast and baby gulps and splutters, too slow and they work hard for not much milk and get cranky about it. They wear out with use too, so you'll replace them along the way. The age on the packet is a guide; how your baby is actually feeding will tell you more about whether the flow is working.

Bibs

Milk has a way of escaping out the sides of even the most enthusiastic feeder. A bib catches the dribbles before they soak into the third clean outfit of the day, and during the newborn months you'll go through more of them than you think possible. Snap-off styles make mid-feed changes easy.

Burp Cloths

Some babies finish a feed, burp politely and move on. Others like to return a percentage of every feed to sender, usually over your shoulder and down your back. A burp cloth lives between you and the damage. Keep one within reach of every feeding spot in the house.

Muslin Wraps

Officially a swaddle, unofficially the most multiskilled bit of fabric in the house. A muslin does burp cloth, giant bib, pram shade and emergency mop duty, then washes and dries overnight, ready to go again. If you already have a stack from the newborn days, congratulations, you own feeding gear.

Bottle Gripper

Around four months, little hands start getting involved in feeds, usually by grabbing the bottle without being particularly good at holding it. Soft handles can give them something easier to grip while you still control the feed.

Making Up the Bottle

You're about to make thousands of these, and every saved minute counts double after midnight.

Formula

If you’re formula feeding, this is the engine room of the whole operation, and the wall of tins can make choosing one feel far more complicated than it needs to. Formula sold in Australia has to meet strict standards, and Stage 1 formula can take you from birth through to 12 months; if bub needs something more specialised, that’s a conversation for your child health nurse, GP or pharmacist.

Formula Containers

Little stacked or divided containers that hold pre-measured scoops of powder, so you're not counting scoops from the tin with one hand at 3am (or worse, losing count halfway). Load them up once a day and every feed becomes tip, shake, done. Cheap, simple and one of those products mums buy a second set of.

Formula Dispenser

The bench-top version of the same idea: a container that dispenses a measured dose of powder with a press or twist. Handy if most bottles get made in the same spot, like next to the kettle. If you're mostly making bottles on the go, the little containers above probably suit you better.

Travel Flask

Leaving the house suddenly involves working out how the next bottle is going to happen somewhere between the supermarket, the park and the side of the road. Some formula-feeding mums carry the boiled water and pre-measured powder separately and mix the feed when it’s needed, with an insulated flask or bottle helping make the whole out-and-about operation easier.

Formula Prep Machine

At 3am, a machine promising a bottle at the press of a button sounds like someone has finally understood the assignment. Prep machines automate some of the measuring, mixing or warming, but they don’t all work the same way, so check that the machine you’re considering can be used in line with the preparation instructions on your formula.

Water Filter

Some families like filtered water for mixing formula, particularly in areas with hard or heavily chlorinated tap water. A jug filter or tap filter does the job. Australian tap water is safe for formula once it's been boiled as directed on the tin, so this one is a preference purchase, not a safety one.

Gas Drops

Bottle-fed babies can swallow air along with their milk, and some end up windy, squirmy and loudly unimpressed about it. Gas drops are one of the products you’ll come across for this particular problem, but because a miserable post-feed baby isn’t always dealing with wind, it’s one to run past your pharmacist or child health nurse first.

Expressing & Storing

For the mums filling bottles with breastmilk: getting it out, keeping it cold, and moving it between home, the freezer and daycare.

Breast Pump (Electric)

Some bottles get made hours before bub actually drinks them, usually with mum attached to a pump somewhere in between. If expressing becomes a regular part of the day, building a freezer stash, heading back to work or sharing feeds, an electric pump takes over the pumping action and can make those repeated sessions considerably easier.

Breast Pump (Wearable)

Pumping is considerably less convenient once there’s a toddler to chase, a school run to make or simply something else you need both hands for. Wearable pumps sit inside the bra and let you move around while expressing, although suction, capacity, fit and battery life vary between models, so the freedom comes with a few more things to compare.

Milk Storage Bags

A freezer stash gets bulky remarkably quickly when every feed is sitting upright in a bottle. Milk storage bags lie flat, thaw quickly and take up far less room, which starts to matter once the freezer drawer begins filling up; date each one before it goes in so you know which milk to use first.

Storage Containers

Not every bit of expressed milk is headed for the freezer; plenty is going into tomorrow's bottle or straight into the fridge. Reusable storage pots or bottles suit that daily rotation, while bags usually make more sense once you're building a frozen stash.

Insulated Carry Bag

Milk needs to stay cold between home, daycare, work and back again. An insulated bag with an ice brick keeps bottles and storage bags at fridge temperature in transit, so the milk you spent twenty minutes expressing doesn't spend the afternoon going warm in the car. Daycare mums, this one's for you.

Bottle Labels

Nobody mentions these until daycare orientation, when you're told every bottle, lid and container needs your child's name on it. Bottle labels are waterproof name stickers that survive the steriliser and the dishwasher, unlike the masking tape and Sharpie you'll try first. Order them before your first daycare week, not during it.

Cleaning & Sterilising

Nobody tells you that bottle feeding is really a washing-up commitment with a baby attached.

Bottle Brush

Bottles have corners a regular dish brush can't reach, and old milk is not a smell you want to discover later. A bottle brush is shaped to scrub right to the bottom, and most come with a little teat brush hiding in the handle for the fiddly bits. Keep it just for bottles, not last night's lasagne dish.

Bottle Cleaning Solution

Once bottles join the washing-up, you may decide you’d rather give them their own detergent than share whatever is sitting beside the kitchen sink. Regular dishwashing detergent does the job, but baby bottle cleaning solutions are another option if you prefer something fragrance-free or made specifically for feeding gear.

Bottle Cleaning Machine

The dishwasher-and-then-some for bottle parts: it washes, sterilises and dries in one cycle. Firmly at the luxury end, but if you're formula feeding full time you're washing bottles six to eight times a day for months, and some parents decide their sanity is worth the bench space. Others look at the price and pick up the bottle brush.

Dishwasher Basket

Teats, valves and tiny bottle parts have an impressive ability to escape through a dishwasher rack and end up somewhere they absolutely shouldn’t. A dishwasher basket keeps the little pieces contained through the cycle, making it useful if your bottles are dishwasher-safe and you plan on putting the family dishwasher to work.

Steriliser

Washing the bottles is only half the job, bottle-feeding equipment also needs to be sterilised until bub is 12 months old. You can do that by boiling, steam or sterilising solution, or hand the job to a steam steriliser that does a whole batch at once; how valuable that bench space becomes will depend largely on how many bottles you’re turning over every day.

Steriliser Bag

Sterilising gets trickier when you’re away from your usual kitchen setup. Microwave steriliser bags let you steam a small batch of bottle parts in a few minutes, which makes them particularly handy for holidays, Grandma’s house or anywhere you have access to a microwave but not your usual steriliser.

Drying Rack

Freshly washed bottles, teats, valves and lids all need somewhere to drip dry, and the family dish rack fills up fast. A bottle drying rack holds all the odd little pieces upright and airing (many look like patches of grass or little trees, which is oddly cheering at the kitchen sink). Not essential, but the bench chaos without one is real.

Where You'll Feed

In the newborn months, feeding can feel like the thing you do more than anything else. This lot is about making all those hours comfortable for both of you.

Bottle Warmer

Some babies couldn't care less whether their milk is warm. Others make their position very clear. If yours is in the second camp, a bottle warmer takes over the standing-at-the-sink-with-a-jug-of-warm-water job and does it hands-free. A jug of warm water genuinely works too; just skip the microwave, which can heat milk unevenly and cause burns.

Nursing Chair

Newborns feed a lot, at all hours, and wherever you sit for it, you'll sit there for hundreds of hours. A feeding chair gives your back and arms somewhere comfortable to settle through all those feeds and usually becomes one of the most-used seats in the house. It doesn't have to be a dedicated nursing chair though; a genuinely comfortable armchair may already solve the problem.

Nursing Pillow

Holding a baby in roughly the same position for feed after feed has a way of finding muscles you didn't know could ache. A nursing pillow takes some of bub's weight off your arms and brings them closer to feeding height, which can make long feeds more comfortable whether there's a breast or bottle involved.

Trolley

You'll quickly discover feeds happen in the same two or three spots, and everything you need is always in a different room. A little three-tier trolley turns burp cloths, bibs, your water bottle, snacks and the phone charger into a feeding station that can follow you around the house; whether that's brilliant or just another piece of furniture depends on how scattered your feeding spots are.

Every bottle feeding product here solved a very specific problem for somebody.

You won't know which of those problems are yours until you're actually living the feeds, the washing, the warming and the 3am scoop counting. Something that looks completely unnecessary now may make perfect sense three weeks in, while the thing everyone told you to buy may never leave the cupboard.

That's the point of a Reverse Checklist. You don't need to predict your bottle-feeding routine before you've lived it. You just need to know what's out there if a problem turns up.

The shops will still be there.