About glass bottles and such - Part II

BB raised the issue of how we clean glass bottles:

You mentioned you are using glass bottles to feed them. That is something I would like to do, but I am a little concerned with the cleaning/sterilization part... I mean most people nowadays use the "BPA-free" plastic bottles (which I don't quite completely trust) and the microwave sterilizers, and from whatever research I have done so far, nobody seems to sterilize the glass bottles in (microwave/electronic) sterilizer. How are you managing to clean the bottles while being so caught up with your three lil miracles?

At the moment, we wash our glass baby bottles the old fashioned way (by hand, using very hot water, a bottle brush and dish soap) because I don't have enough of the bottles yet. Once we have a full set of 27 to 30 bottles, we will put them in the dishwasher. The Munchkin bottle brush works really well to clean the bottom and neck of the bottles. I originally used another (generic) bottle brush we had, but it didn't clean the hard-to-reach places that well.

We don't steam sterilize the bottles, but Munchkin's instructions state they can be steam sterilized. Here's what the manufacturer has to say on the topic of cleaning and usage:

"Before first use, place in boiling water for 5 minutes. For easy cleaning use a Munchkin bottle brush and/or place in top rack of dishwasher. Bottle and nipple may be boiled (2-3 minutes completely immersed in a pan of water) or steam sterilized. Boiling of ring and hood is not recommended.

To use: to heat bottle contents, use Munchkin Deluxe Bottle & Food Warmer or place bottle in a container of warm water for several minutes with the cap off of the bottle. Sudden temperature change may cause breakage. To reduce chances of colic & gas, stop feeding before your baby has finished the bottle. Feeding baby in semi-upright position may help prevent ear infections. Avoid over-tightening the bottle collar onto bottle body as this can close nipple vents. Bottle can be frozen to store breast milk. Expressed breast milk can be stored in sterilized bottle in refrigerator for up to 48 hours (not in refrigerator door) or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Never refreeze breast milk or add fresh breast milk to already frozen milk."

When it comes to heating the bottles, you have to be a little more careful with glass compared to plastic, but this hasn't presented a problem for us. I simply immerse the bottles in a cup of warm water. You don't want to use boiling hot water since overheating milk kills nutrients and can scald your baby's mouth. Our babies usually get room temperature to lukewarm milk, but on a few occasions they've been so hungry in between feedings that they've had cold milk straight from the fridge (without complaining).

About glass bottles and such - Part I

One piece of sage advice I received from parents of HOMs and my friends was to try a variety of bottles before purchasing a large quantity because babies don't always take to whatever brand the parents may prefer.

This turned out to be so true. Our girls were fed breast milk from Similac one-time use bottles in the NICU and are now used to those latex nipples. I have been trying various bottles in search of similarly shaped and sized nipples - with a flow that is on par - that they would transition to.

We are ultimately planning to buy 27 bottles: 3 babies x 8 bottles per day, plus one "spare" set, to enable us to wash bottles only once per day. BB asked how we go about cleaning the glass bottles and I'll get to that in Part II.

Everyone also advised us to skip the smaller 4oz bottles (or buy only a few) and go straight to 8oz bottles. Since we're still in the "test driving bottles" phase, we haven't fully committed to a brand yet, but I'm leaning towards the Munchkin glass bottles.

Fortunately, the nipples and rings we received from the NICU fit on the BPA-free plastic Medela bottles (used for pumping) as well as Munchkin glass bottles and vice versa. The Similac one-time use bottle nipples and rings also fit onto the Snappie bottles the NICU provided me with for pumping and freezing breast milk.

I like the Munchkin bottles for several reasons: I have been trying to use less plastic (yes, even the BPA-free kind), the curved shape of the Munchkin bottles make them easier to hold than other glass bottles on the market, the silicone sleeve covers the bottle better than some of the other brands, and the shape of the nipples match what my kids are now used to. My husband dropped one of the Munchkin glass bottles from hip height onto a hardwood floor before we had a chance to put the silicone sleeves on. Miraculously it didn't shatter or crack. We may not be so lucky next time, so we promptly covered them all with silicone sleeves. We battled to get the silicone sleeves onto the bottles, but I'm willing to deal with that nuisance.

We have also tried Avent bottles (they leaked), Playtex Drop-Ins (the nipples didn't work for my babies, the liners are expensive, and it was a hassle to use these bottles for small amounts of milk). You need to push the milk into the nipple to have the benefit of the bottles reducing gassiness. With the girls still not drinking that much in one go and falling asleep easily during feeds, it required us to reposition the baby and then use two hands to squeeze the air out of the little drop-in bag. Repeat this a few times with each baby, plus the fact that you need to get ALL the air out until milk flows through the nipple (messy) and you have a sense of why this just wasn't worth the hassle.

I've heard great things about the Dr Brown's glass bottles, but parents of multiples have told me that they're a pain in the neck to assemble because they have more pieces.

I'm sure there are other brands we could be trying, so if you have a suggestion for glass bottles or other tips on this topic, I'm all ears.