These tips were provided to us by a mum of twins who intended to breastfeed, but ended up formula feeding from virtually newborn to 2 years of age. There is not much information on bottle feeding available so if you have to feed with formula, you may find this routine useful. We recommend you check this with your maternal healthcare nurse or a health professional before adopting the routine to make sure it’s OK for your babies.

Tips on bottle feeding twins

Before the babies arrive home
- Buy a sterilizer as you’ll need one whether you are breastfeeding or bottle feeding.
- Only purchase a couple of bottles and teats to start with, so you can see which brands you like best (see reflux below).
- Make sure you have some sterilized bottles and cooled boiled water in the fridge ready to go. We didn’t and it wasn’t a peaceful home-coming!
- Buy only BPA-free bottles.

Babies with Reflux
- We were advised to try some other bottle brands to see if that made a difference to our twins' reflux – it didn’t. We also tried a reflux-friendly formula, but found no difference there either.
- We had to be extra careful that bottle was held in such a way as to make sure that the milk always filled the teat so the baby didn’t suck in air.
- Burping regularly while bottle feeding is particularly important for reflux babies – when they stopped sucking strongly or when they had drunk half their milk we would always burp them. Usually we’d burp our babies approx 3-4 times each feed.

The Production Line
- Once we accepted that breastfeeding wasn’t an option we set up a production line for formula feeding.
- We purchased 24 bottles and teats, along with a shallow plastic bin to sit them in (so they wouldn’t fall over when we put them in the fridge), and a good bottle brush. Although you could probably get away with less bottles (we bought a multiple of 6 as you can fit 6 bottles in the sterilizer at once), but this allowed us to prepare the bottles just once a day and have enough in stock for mistakes.
- We also bought a dedicated kettle for boiling and cooling the water, as we found our kitchen kettle kept getting re-boiled for cups of tea and the water never got a chance to cool! A stove top kettle allows you to boil the water for a few minutes (just lift the lid to stop the whistling), whereas the electric kettles will automatically switch off once they have boiled for only a few seconds.
- All the bottles, teats, lids and necks were all hand washed in soapy hot water before putting them in the sterlizer (until our twins turned one – then we started using the top shelf of the dishwasher).
- Once the bottles came out of the sterilizer, we would pour in the cooled, boiled water up to the required level, then put the lids on and sit them in the plastic bin on the top shelf of the fridge.

The Routine
- When the ‘siren’ sounded (ie a baby started crying) we would take two bottles from the top shelf of the fridge, loosen the lids a bit (so they don’t explode) and put them in the microwave. The lids are kept on to prevent any dirt from inside the microwave from dropping into the water.
- Once the bottles out came out of the microwave, we’d scoop in the required amount of formula (and count aloud while putting the scoops in).
- Then put the lid back on tightly, and shake it with a strong rocking motion (don’t shake it like a cocktail mixer or it might create air bubbles). Make sure the formula is fully dissolved then pour a few drops on your wrist to make sure it’s the right temperature before feeding it to the baby.

Note: Coming out of the microwave: if the water in the bottle was too hot, we found that the formula would foam up and create bubbles on the surface, but if the water was too cold, the formula would not dissolve properly, so you really need to get to know your microwave. Also, if we mucked up the counting of the formula scoops we would discard it and start again (it’s very easy to make a mistake and lose track when you’re tired).

Out and about with formula
- When heading out we’d take our dispenser with pre-measured serves of formula, two bottles of cold water from the fridge (in a thermal holder to keep them cold), and a 1L flask of boiling water. The flask meant we were completely self sufficient and could make our own bottles on-demand by pouring the hot water from the flask and the cold water from the bottle back and forth until it got to the right temperature in the bottle. Too many times we gave our bottles to someone in a food court to heat up, and the bottles would come back way too hot (as the commercial microwaves heat quicker) and we’d have to wait for them to cool down – while the babies cried. Too stressful! The flask was great as we always had extra water to cover any accidents or leaks, and it was fast and flexible – but we were also aware that we had to be extra careful with the hot water.

Things we learnt along the way
- You have to keep reviewing the feeding patterns over time, as the babies will grow into the faster teats (eg Avent teats are size 1 for smaller babies, then size 2, etc). Our daughter was not good with the transitions and choked and spluttered on the faster teats – when this happened we would stick with the old speed and wait another couple of days and try her again. Once she was OK with it, we’d change all the teats over to the faster speed. Trying to manage different teat speeds for different babies was too difficult as you could not clearly see the teat number in low light conditions.
- We always threw out the dregs and just made up new bottles if we needed to – we wasted a lot of formula this way but we felt it was important always to feed the babies with warm, fresh formula.
- To work out the amount of formula we needed we always went by the guidelines on the formula tin, so we knew the correct strength.
- We really tried to keep to a 3hr-feeding routine when they were young, to avoid the babies snacking and having to pour ¾ bottles of formula down the sink! Learned this the hard way…
- Once they turned 1 year old, we put them straight onto cows milk which saved a lot of money but meant we kept running out of milk (at one stage we were using 12L of milk per week)!
- We decided the day after their second birthday would be their last bottle of formula. Although we were dreading the consequences of removing the bottles from their routine, we were amazed at how easy it was in the end – nothing happened!
- One alternative to our method is to make up a big jug of formula in the fridge, and pour this pre-mixed formula straight from the jug into the bottles as you need it. The reason we didn’t do this method is because once the formula is made up it must be discarded after 24hrs, and we found it too hard to keep track of the age of the formula. Also, if you lose count of the scoops when making up the big jug, you have to throw a greater quantity away. That’s why we personally opted for making the formula fresh each time.

At 3 years old our twins still have a little half-glass of milk before bed and a few glasses of milk and water during the day but no more bottles.

It took us a while to work out this routine of making up the bottles. Our approach to the process was that it must be fast and hygienic. We generally made two bottles at once as we kept our twins ‘in-sync’ – if the second baby was asleep we would wake them and feed them immediately after we had finished the first. If they woke together we would feed them together – when I was on my own this meant holding one in my arms and reaching down to one in the rocker. It was quite a juggling act doing this and burping them both through the feed, and I felt like my arms were going to drop off, so I only did this in emergencies. I would have preferred to breastfeed my babies but it was not to be, so this is how formula feeding worked out for our family.