The Feeding Gadget That Helped This First-Time Mum

I feel like sleeping and feeding are the two biggies with newborns. Pretty much everyone tells you to say goodbye to sleep as you know it for the first four months and they’re not exaggerating, but feeding is slightly more personal.

It’s made very clear that breast is best - even on the labels of powdered formula, but not everyone has a smooth journey and for some breastfeeding isn’t an option. I’ve written about my struggles with feeding in the early months and while I have no regrets looking back, I do wish I’d realised that I wasn’t alone in what I was going through.

In fact, most people struggle with breastfeeding in the first few weeks and months - from the latch to the supply, there is a lot to it.

When Liberty’s content editor Shannon, 32, had her son Sidney a year ago, ‘tongue tie’ wasn’t something she’d prepped for. After a difficult first few months, she found her One Thing: Nuby RapidCool Bottle Maker. Here’s Shannon’s story…

Pregnant me was hell-bent on being the total chilled, relaxed, laissez faire type when it came to feeding. I told anyone who asked that while yes, I planned on breastfeeding, if, for any reason, it didn’t work out then No Big Deal. I was formula fed and had zero qualms about formula feeding my own children. I wasn’t prepared for how differently I would feel when Sidney arrived earth side.

Despite being the queen of research and having read all the books, in retrospect, I really didn’t know anything about breastfeeding. Beyond the need for an industrial-strength nipple balm.

It was only an hour or so after giving birth that I thought ‘am I supposed to feed him now?’ and I just kinda went into it blindly. He seemed to latch straight away and while it was excruciatingly painful, I thought it was going to be a breeze.

It wasn’t until a couple days later, and the pain hadn’t let up, that I sought the advice of a breastfeeding consultant, on recommendation from a friend. She weighed Sid, and we discovered he was losing weight – and quite a lot of it, meaning it was highly likely he wasn’t actually taking any milk in at all. And the culprit? A tongue tie.

This sent me through a loop. I quickly descended into a pit of despair, trying everything and anything to make breastfeeding work, while topping him up with formula in between. Over the next few months, as he slowly (so very slowly) put on grams of weight yet continued to drop centiles, I tried everything to improve proceedings.

He had his tongue tie cut twice (who knew they could grow back?!), I went on medication to improve my supply, and I entered into a vicious and traumatic cycle of having to breastfeed, pump and then formula feed my baby every couple of hours. This meant sleep was out of the window, and going out was completely off the cards.

Every fortnightly weigh-in left me feeling even more of a failure. It wasn’t at all that I didn’t approve of formula (I did, and still do, it’s been a lifeline for us) but it just felt like breastfeeding was the most motherly, most human, most primal act of all, and yet my body (and I suppose Sid’s, too) just couldn’t make it work.

It triggered postnatal depression, and I spent the first four months of his life crying every single day. To say it was a wild ride was a total understatement. As shameful as I feel to admit it, there were moments when I thought ‘what have we done?’. By four months, my body had had enough and I just couldn’t cope, so I finally made the decision to stop breastfeeding entirely, and move Sid solely onto formula.

After months of this horrendous feeding process of breastfeeding, pumping and bottle feeding every few hours, I knew I had to find shortcuts to make feeding quicker and less of a chore. That’s when I came across the RapidCool which has been like my right arm ever since.

Rather than having to wait 30 minutes for fresh formula to cool down pre-feed, you can simply cool it down using this clever flask, and it’s ready in a couple of minutes. It made feeding at night much quicker, thus helping me gather those extra pockets of sleep. It was also great when out and about, when Sid would wake up desperate for milk, asap.

Looking back now, I undoubtedly would have moved onto formula much quicker. I feel like the whole experience robbed me of four blissful months with a tiny newborn, and I just wish I had the confidence back then to make that decision for myself and my family. I think you’re so vulnerable in those early stages, and so worried about doing The Right Thing, that it feels like a massive failure when you can’t do something.

These days Sidney is a dream eater - clearly someone is laughing at me somewhere. Yes, he has off days, but generally, he’s a gannet and he’s climbed back up the centiles like a real trooper.

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In the first few months, feeding is such a huge deal and it is all consuming - even if everything goes smoothly. I found the focus on weight quite stressful, especially if we had a poo explosion minutes before the all-important weigh-in.

If we ever decide to go for a second, I’d like to think I’ll take the learnings and be more chill about it. And, have the hospital-grade pump ready and waiting at home. When we made the move to exclusively formula, we opted for the Tommee Tippee Prep Machine, but I could be tempted with the Nuby gadget.

How did you find feeding in those early months? I’d love you to share your experience in the comments and any tips new mums might find helpful.