How I manage my expressed breast milk for my caretaker to feed my baby

As a new mom before going back to workforce, I have progressively trained my body to pump during working hours and breastfeed during the hours where I expect myself to be at home with baby.

Since my baby is the first grandchild ever in my father-in-law's family tree, you can imagine that they could not bear to hear the slightest cry from my baby. Certainly, they would like to ensure that my baby can be fed right away once she is awake.

In order to demonstrate to my family that feeding breast milk is easier, faster and more convenient, I have put some thoughts into how my mother-in-law can prepare the breast milk and feed my baby as soon as possible. Here is the practice I am currently adopting:

Items required

1. Storage bottles (Bumblebee standard size)
2. Teats (Hito silicone slow flow standard teat - breastlike)
3. Electric hot water dispenser
4. Timer

Preparation the night before

• My storage bottles are my baby's feeding bottles. 
• I will ensure that each storage bottle is filled with 3 - 4 oz of breast milk. This is my baby's intake per feed. 
• Since I will be away from home for 12 hours, I will prepare 5 storage bottles (4 feeds + 1 stand by feed) in the fridge. 
• I bought extra teats and prepared the teats in advance. Since I have quite a number of storage bottles, I took out some of the bottle caps and fixed the teats into the ring. I will leave the teats with ring in the sterilizer. 

When my baby is up for feeding time, what my mother-in-law will do is:

1. Take out the readily available breast milk in the storage bottle.
2. Fill some hot water into a cup using the electric hot water dispenser.
3. Warm the milk by placing the storage bottle into the cup filled with hot water.
4. Set timer for 5 minutes [We have timed earlier that milk is warmed in 5 minutes using 98 degrees hot water].
5. Once time is up, take out the bottle cap and replace with teat. 
6. Feed baby.

How do I find this method?

• When my mother-in-law set the timer for 5 minutes, she can still hold and play with my baby while waiting for times up. At least she doesn't need to rush to mix milk powder into warm water at the right quantity and test the milk temperature, while my baby gets cranky and cry out loud. :-)
• Since the storage bottles are the feeding bottles, it means my mother-in-law doesn't need to transfer the milk into special feeding bottles. This will save time in milk preparation, avoid unwanted spills, and save the time spent in washing feeding bottles. :-)
• Of course, I will need to invest a little more time every night to make sure that all the items are well prepared. 

How do you prepare your breast milk for your caretaker to feed your child?


- underweight mom