(Part 2) Best products from r/FormulaFeeders

My daycare marks the date with masking tape themselves. Bonus! And I bought stickers for the bottles that have thus far held up 6 weeks perfectly. Target has a store brand: Baby Bottle Labels, Self-laminating - Great for Daycare https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0048SOBGO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Bh6oybJJRQQ2K

Sometimes babies don't do well with a particular regular formula, but do fine with another regular formula. We tried a few different ones before asking a friend who had four babies for help. She confidently told us GoodStart would work. I had avoided it until then because I hate Nestle and their formula but she was right; he tolerated it really well and his eczema improved. We also used a lot of Aveeno baby eczema lotion.

It wasn’t immediate from what I remember. I think it took like 24-48 hours. We used these and they worked really well. Now we’re using the mommy bliss probiotic cause they’re cheaper but they work pretty good too.

If you end up getting away from the rtf formula, a dispenser will make things faster. Something like this is excellent and eliminates the “am I putting enough/too much formula in” terror that comes with feeding early morning or late at night. When you are well rested (ha) fill it up and have it ready for feeds. This will also help when you go back to sleeping in your room because you can have bottles, formula, and a pitcher of water ready. We had a little station set up on a nightstand (towel on top for water spills when half asleep).

I'd stay with the same formula and buy a shitton of bandanna bibs. My son spits up like... fucking insane amounts. Even still at 6 months. So much. It's crazy. But I cut down on his outfit changes by making sure he always has one of these on. I have about 30 or so and we cycle through them every week. It's so much easier to swap out a soggy bib than it is a full outfit.

As far as the husband and I... not a whole lot we can do to save ourselves other than make sure we cover with a large cloth before picking up our son. I like the Gerber cloth diaper rags for burp cloths best. They're super absorbent, won't break the bank, and I can bleach them. Again, we go through about 20 of these a week. And he spends 10 hours a day, 5 days a week in daycare where they use their own!

I also use comotomo bottles and was travelling last week, I bought the oxo travel bottle rack and I loved it so much. It came with it's own brush, I also had an empty tiny sample bottle of Aveeno baby lotion that I washed out and put dish soap in and it fit perfectly inside the rack. I think you could get away without sterilization if you are in the US, I just used the hottest water at the end to rinse.

Here is the link
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0771JS51X?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

Hi! We started my baby on althera when he was 6 months old and saw the same problem with spitting up a lot. He is milk allergic though, so we didn't have a lot of options on formula. We started adding one ounce of oatmeal for every six of formula. The oatmeal we use is meant for babies, so it's fortified as well for certain vitamins and minerals and we know it has less heavy metals than adult oatmeal. We use the milk free version of this stuff. I'm on mobile so I'm not sure what this link is going to look like!

So we just take an ounce of water, add a scoop of this powder, heat it in the microwave for 20 seconds ( it dissolves and swells) and then add six more ounces of water and six scoops of formula.

We noticed a huge difference and he pretty much stopped spitting up almost immediately!

https://www.amazon.com/Semper-Havre-Valling-Cereal-Drink/dp/B00MWX6KIE

Any kitchen scale on amazon is fine. You can usually find them for like $10. Just make sure it measures grams, which most of them do. This one seems fine:

MUELLER Digital Kitchen Scale, 30% Greater Accuracy Quad Transducer, Multi-Function Back-Lit LCD, Stainless Steel, 11 lbs, 5 kg (Batteries Included) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075FF9PD2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_jlg2CbNR9GVWH

I agree with what has been said so far. A soft cooler is the best way I've found to keep formula cold. That's what we use for daycare and if we go to someone's house. We have heavy duty ice packs that will stay cold all day in the cooler so I don't worry about putting any leftover (note: not drank from at all) bottles back in our fridge at home for overnight use. We also have a small two bottle bag we got from the hospital and it works the same way only for a little less time.

ETA: We use something very similar to this with an ice pack like this.

It's worth noting that to mix formula you measure the water first. If you want to make it super easy pre measure water and get one of these and pre fill with the correct amount of formula (https://www.amazon.com/OXO-No-Spill-Formula-Dispenser-Swivel/dp/B005XTKHF6/ref=sr_1_8_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1466179034&sr=8-8&keywords=formula+container)

We use this Oxo brush and I love it. I'm not sure how well it would work with narrow bottles, but the bristles are pretty squishy. I've used it on Medela, Munchkin Latch, Philips Avent, and Lansinoh Momma bottles with no issues. Plus, the stand lets it dry easy and keeps it from laying on the counter.

Edit: fixing autocorrect 🙄

My baby is 3 months old and we’ve been to 3 hotels so far. We brought this extremely compact drying rack and a small bottle of dish soap and washed all the bottles in the bathroom sink each night before bed. We use these slender bottles that fit into an insulated/protective six-bottle carrier that goes around with us during the day. This method was very easy for us; we use room temp water for his formula so he’s not too needy when it comes to warming.

We had a similar problem with my little guy and we switched to Enfamil Reguline for about a week. It makes the poop softer and easier to pass. He still only pooped once a day. His poop was very liquidy so we have settled on Earth's Best on Amazon and he seems to be happiest on it. Normal poop consistency. But I've read on the American Pediatrics Association website that one poop a day (or less) for a formula-fed baby is nothing to be concerned about as long as the poop isn't hard and pebble-like when it passes.

We bought these spoons from Amazon just to mix formula and they work amazingly well! We never have clumps anymore and mixing is a lot faster! Can’t believe we didn’t buy them sooner. We keep them in an empty water glass in the same cabinet as the bottles so the are always very clean. On the go we take a few spoons with us in a ziplock

We do powder formula, so I make as many bottles of prefilled water as I think he may need and then use a little plastic container that you can measure formula into kinda like this and then mix as needed :)

Something like this? Similac infant nipples & rings, Standard Flow, Ready To Use, Case of 25 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003V9PXE0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_V5uPBbHT41PXK