Hellobee Boards

@grizz: We ended up with more bottles than we needed because we bought a few different brands. Tommee Tippee ended up being our favorite (it has a really wide nipple so I like that it is most similar to my breast shape, and LO takes them really well). My daughter started day care at 15 weeks last Monday and I find that having 6 TT bottles is perfect. She takes 3 four ounce bottles every day so when I get home I have 3 clean bottles to put my pumped milk in, and then later that night I can wash the other 3 that got used that day and then leave them on the drying rack for when I get home the next day. We certainly could make do just fine with only 3 bottles but it's nice to not have to immediately clean and dry the bottles in order to get them filled back up to go to day care the next morning.

Bottles: I would wait on bottles until you know which ones your LO likes. You might want to purchase a sample of some of the more popular brands (Dr Browns, Avent, etc) and see which ones your LO prefers.

I am a SAHM so didn't really have a need for bottles, but for the couple months I was trying to get LO used to a bottle, I found 4-5 bottles was plenty.

Sleepers/gowns: We didn't use gowns. LO basically lived in footed PJs for the first three months of her life. There were lots of spit ups and blow outs in the early days, so some days I went through three footed PJs a day. I found having about 15 sleepers in both cotton and fleece were plenty. This way, I could do laundry every other day (I still had to do laundry frequently b/c I didn't want the stains to set).

Socks: Didn't have much use for socks in the beginning (first 2- 3 months) since LO lived in the footed PJs. I bought one six-pack and that was more than plenty. She basically only wore them when we took her out and she wore real "outfits."

I had 6 bottles; they came home each night so I washed and reused. They suggested keeping 2 spare outfits at the center but at that age we sometimes went through 2-3 outfits a day so I bought (dedicated) 2 sleep & play and 2 onsie/pant sets. I bought a pack of socks (I think there were 10 pairs) and just left them there as well. The daycare was really good about giving me a heads up if I needed to bring in more of something (if for example I hadn't been paying attention and all the socks had migrated home).

I bought 1 avent and 1 playtex drop in - the IBCLC that I worked with suggested the playtex drop in because it has the least amount of 'drip' and you can squeeze all the air out. I am a FT WOHM and we have 6 bottles. He drinks 3-4 bottles while I am at work. We don't have a dishwasher so I was fine with a few because I was going to have to wash them nightly anyway. If we had a dishwasher I would have bought 8 (enough for 2days)

Most days LO was in a sleep & play or onesie and a pair of carters cotton pants. We had about 4 pairs of pants. A friend of mine gave me some really good advice - you really only need about 6-8 sleepers/pants because you're washing like everyother day and regardless you always grab whatever is on top.

I put socks on LO from day 1 - it freaked me out when we wasn't wearing them. We had probably a 6 pairs because I didn't change them everyday.

I did stock up on onesies (carters brand) everyone is different but I still put a onesie under everything LO wears. I figure I always wear a tank and DH always wears an undershirt so LO should too! I always hated the thought of anything rubbing up against his little chest.