How to set up an optimized battle station for cleaning baby bottles

You will likely need a baby bottle system, so let’s talk about why you need one and how to set one up.

Baby bottle systems are important because it allows the father to be a surrogate feeder for the mother. With breast pump technology, you can mechanically express breast milk into containers for feeding at a later time. Formula is another alternative that can be used to supplement breast milk.

If you have a great baby bottle system, this will make your life much, much easier. If you do not have a good baby bottle system, this will probably be frustrating as %$&#.

The following overviews what I think is a well-optimized baby bottle system, assuming that you will be pumping breast milk for later feeding and/or feeding with formula.

First, you need to go shopping.

You will need a breast pump if you are going to pump breast milk to feed later in a bottle. We used a breast pump with disposable, pre-sterilized bags. These pumps come in single (one breast) or double (two breast at the same time) configurations. They are quite expensive, but they pay themselves many times over. The disposable bag system is awesome because you do not have to worry about sterilizing breast milk storage containers again and again. These bags have handy volume markings in ounces and mL on the side. You will need to get at least four breast cups and pump connectors (the things that connect the breasts to the breast pump) to use in your rotation.

For bottles, we used the PlayTex disposable liner nurser (baby bottle) system. I am not making a single red cent for recommending these, I am just telling you what we liked and what we used. A single nurser consists of an outer shell where a disposable, pre-sterilized milk liner drops in. A nipple screws in over the top and seals the liner. The disposable liners are awesome for the same reason as the milk bags—less things to sterilize. You will need about six bottle shells/nipples, and about a hundred liners per month. It is important to stick with only one type of nurser bottle. If you have several different brands of nursers you will get frustrated with mismatched items that do not fit with each other.

You will need a baby-safe detergent to wash milk or formula off of the bottles and breast pump components. You need to have a bottle scrubber set as well.

You will need a drying rack for the bottles and breast pump components. We use the Boon Lawn drying rack—it looks like a bunch of plastic spikes close together that you stick all your sterilized stuff on. Look it up on Amazon, this is one of the best baby purchases we made.

You will need a sterilizer. We boil water in a stock pot dedicated to our baby bottle system and put all the bottle and breast pump components in for five minutes. It does the trick. You can also buy commercial sterilizers, but I heard those are kind of expensive so we did not bother. You will also need a pair of tongs to pull stuff out of boiling water.

Last of all, you need a system to have this all running smoothly. You can have the entire kit as described above and still have things fall apart on you. You need to figure out the following problems to make your nursing system run smoothly:

• Where do the dirty nurser and breast pump components go?
• Where do the washed (but not sterilized) components go?
• Where do the sterilized (but not dry) components go?
• Where do the sterilized and dry components go?
• How do you warm up refrigerated breast milk and/or formula?

Here is our step-by-step system at my house:

1. As nurser and breast pump components get used and dirty, we place them by the sink until enough parts accumulate to warrant a sterilizing cycle.
2. I use detergent and bottle sponges to clean all of the components in the sink and then place them in a large bowl. While I am doing this, I start a pot of boiling water on the stove. By the time I have washed everything, the water is close to a boil.
3. I then dump all of the parts that need to be sterilized into the boiling water. (Note: we use the Playtex nurser system—the outer hard plastic shell that holds the disposable liner just needs to be cleaned and not sterilized, so we don’t bother boiling this shell). Everything needs to be boiled for 5 minutes to kill off any germs. I stick the ends of the tongs in for a couple of minutes to make sure that these are clean.
4. I set the Boon Lawn drying rack nearby the stove and pull out all of the sterilized parts with the tongs. I then dump the boiling water as having it around is a hazard.
5. I move the drying rack to a low-traffic spot in our kitchen. It takes a couple of hours to dry.
6. Once dry, I assemble the breast pump components and put them in a clean plastic bag in the nursery beside the breast pump, so my wife can easily access her entire pump system (which is always at hand, plugged in, and ready for action beside her nursing chair). I assemble the Playtex nurser system, placing the nipples in the retainer rings, putting the disposable liner in the nurser shell, and screwing everything together.
7. For warming up refrigerated breast milk or formula, we have an electric kettle with some water in it on standby. I hit the ON button on the kettle and then after it gets hot I pour it into a ceramic bowl with a little cold water to bring down the temperature a bit. I test the temperature to see if it is warm, and then set a bottle full of breast milk/formula in it to warm up.

Having this all figured out before the baby comes is the best—we didn’t figure this out beforehand and it was pretty stressful figuring it out while our newborn was shrieking her lungs out!

This may look like a common kitchen, but it is actually a well-tuned battle station for cleaning baby bottles and breast pump components.

(a) Designated place for used bottles and breast pump equipment; (b) Baby safe detergent; (c) Bottle sponges; (d) Stainless steel bowl for putting washed items; (e) Sterilization equipment; (f) Drying rack; (g) Designated place to put assembled bottles.

The above system sounds pretty straightforward and common sense, and you may have already figured this out.
I mention all of these steps in detail because as new parents this took us a couple of weeks to figure out the system in its entirety.

We thought that since we had all the pieces in our house we were alright, but the thing that we were missing was the system. You need an optimized system!

Before we figured this out I nearly had a meltdown trying to settle my crying baby while trying to find enough sterilized parts to assemble a bottle! I want to stress the importance of having a great system to make breast pumping and bottle feeding as easy as possible.

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