How to Wash and Prep Bottles for Multiples

Over the past year, I've come across several moms who were trying to figure out the best way to get through all of the bottles that need to be washed and filled everyday. I know. It's a daunting, tedious task. Especially when there is no end in sight.

When the kids first came home, they were going through 7 bottles each per day. Unfortunately, we had to use (and still do) the Dr. Browns bottles because the kids had such issues with reflux and aspiration. They are awesome bottles, but they also have the most parts.

Per feeding it was: 

4 bottles

4 stems

4 vents

4 rings

4 nipples

That's 20 parts per feeding! Multiply that by 7, and we were at 140 bottle parts to wash per day. Yikes!

While it's true that we are slowly but surely coming to the end of our bottle days (hopefully within the next month or so!), I did want to make sure that I wrote this down for other moms who are looking for the streamlined version of bottle washing and prepping.

And for those of you who were just curious...here you go!

The Bottle Washing/Prepping Station

Dirty bottles go in on the left hand side of the sink and emerge with formula to the right of the crockpot.

Section 1: The Washing

Sink filled with used bottles.

First, take the bottles apart and separate each piece. Then rinse the bottles and throw those in the top rack of the dishwasher. The bottle parts all go in a big pot (in direct proportion to the number of multiples that you have). We use this giant stock pot that we borrowed from my parents when the babies came home.

See the water leftover from the last round of washing? We leave the water in the pot between washings for the pieces to soak. To wash the bottles, first drain all of the soaking water out.

Then add in dish washing liquid and the hottest tap water you can get.

Swish it all around with your hand.

And rinse each piece under hot water.

Everything goes to the right of the sink on a clean towel to drain. You can use one of those bottle drying racks, but we would need 3 of them to get everything on there. I just set them on the towel since we go through them so fast.

Tip: Switch out the towel on a fairly regular basis. It can get kinda gross from being water logged so much! I wipe down my counter with a Clorox wipe every time I change the towel to keep bacteria at bay.

Wait a second! Where is the part where you boil water or use the little bags by Medela to sanitize everything?

That is an excellent question.

I understand that typically people do sanitize everything between bottle feedings. But typically people only have one baby at a time. Here's how I see it: My kids all roll around on the same floor, chew on the same toys, sit on each other's heads (as much as I try to keep that from happening), and all use the nearest burp cloth that is handy when there is a spit up without regard to who used it last. Germs are definitely shared at our house which is why we try so hard to keep the germs that are coming into the house at bay. So we do the dunk and swish method to keep up with all of the bottles and once in a long while I run them through boiling water for good measure. Probably not the most sterile way to go about it, but sometimes we have to adjust for reality.

Section 2: The Prepping

Directly to the right of the draining towel is our bottle prepping area. We keep a crockpot on "warm" all day to use for mass bottle warming. Pop the bottles in there about 15 minutes before feeding time, and you are good to go! We also keep daily medications and vitamins for the kids here along with their tubs of multigrain and rice cereal. We also keep Abby's miralax here. Poor thing!

A nice group of clean bottles and a mixing pitcher ready to be used! Since we are down to three bottle feedings a day, I'm only filling 12 bottles. Obviously, if you are doing more, make more! Keep in mind that powdered formula is good for 24 hours after being mixed and plan accordingly.

Another view of the bottle prepping station. Notice that the extra towel is there to keep the mixing mess to a minimum. Just shake it over the sink after making bottles to dispose of any spilled powder.

12 filled bottles ready to go in the refrigerator! The hardest part about this is making sure you have the correct bottle for the correct baby at the correct time. I fill all of one baby's bottles before moving on to the next. Then I line them up on the counter in order, or put them away in the refrigerator as they are made.

We designated the top shelf of our refrigerator for bottles and extra formula for cereal. Below each bottle, I taped the name of the baby who gets that row. I did this way back when they first came home so that helpers would know exactly which one belonged to each baby. Grab one from each row, pop in the crockpot 15 minutes before feeding (times may vary by crockpot), assemble the vent, stem, ring, and nipple along with any thickeners, extra formula for calories, or vitamins, and you are good to go!

Do all of this a few times and it becomes second nature. I'm pretty sure that Sean and I can do it in our sleep now. We often tag team the bottle prepping with one of us filling the pitcher and measuring out the powdered formula and the other pouring the bottles.

I would love to hear how our method works for you if you try it! Please leave a comment if you do give it a whirl...or swish! :)

***********************

In other news, we are down to our last three days of the Top 25 Moms of Multiples Blog Contest!

Don't forget that you can vote once every 24 hours until the contest ends on Wednesday at 3pm central time. Right now we are in second place, and we would love your vote! And thanks for putting up with the reminders for the last couple of weeks. It's been quite the race!

Over the past year, I've come across several moms who were trying to figure out the best way to get through all of the bottles that need to be washed and filled everyday. I know. It's a daunting, tedious task. Especially when there is no end in sight.

When the kids first came home, they were going through 7 bottles each per day. Unfortunately, we had to use (and still do) the Dr. Browns bottles because the kids had such issues with reflux and aspiration. They are awesome bottles, but they also have the most parts.

Per feeding it was: 

4 bottles

4 stems

4 vents

4 rings

4 nipples

That's 20 parts per feeding! Multiply that by 7, and we were at 140 bottle parts to wash per day. Yikes!

While it's true that we are slowly but surely coming to the end of our bottle days (hopefully within the next month or so!), I did want to make sure that I wrote this down for other moms who are looking for the streamlined version of bottle washing and prepping.

And for those of you who were just curious...here you go!

The Bottle Washing/Prepping Station

Dirty bottles go in on the left hand side of the sink and emerge with formula to the right of the crockpot.

Section 1: The Washing

Sink filled with used bottles.

First, take the bottles apart and separate each piece. Then rinse the bottles and throw those in the top rack of the dishwasher. The bottle parts all go in a big pot (in direct proportion to the number of multiples that you have). We use this giant stock pot that we borrowed from my parents when the babies came home.

See the water leftover from the last round of washing? We leave the water in the pot between washings for the pieces to soak. To wash the bottles, first drain all of the soaking water out.

Then add in dish washing liquid and the hottest tap water you can get.

Swish it all around with your hand.

And rinse each piece under hot water.

Everything goes to the right of the sink on a clean towel to drain. You can use one of those bottle drying racks, but we would need 3 of them to get everything on there. I just set them on the towel since we go through them so fast.

Tip: Switch out the towel on a fairly regular basis. It can get kinda gross from being water logged so much! I wipe down my counter with a Clorox wipe every time I change the towel to keep bacteria at bay.

Wait a second! Where is the part where you boil water or use the little bags by Medela to sanitize everything?

That is an excellent question.

I understand that typically people do sanitize everything between bottle feedings. But typically people only have one baby at a time. Here's how I see it: My kids all roll around on the same floor, chew on the same toys, sit on each other's heads (as much as I try to keep that from happening), and all use the nearest burp cloth that is handy when there is a spit up without regard to who used it last. Germs are definitely shared at our house which is why we try so hard to keep the germs that are coming into the house at bay. So we do the dunk and swish method to keep up with all of the bottles and once in a long while I run them through boiling water for good measure. Probably not the most sterile way to go about it, but sometimes we have to adjust for reality.

Section 2: The Prepping

Directly to the right of the draining towel is our bottle prepping area. We keep a crockpot on "warm" all day to use for mass bottle warming. Pop the bottles in there about 15 minutes before feeding time, and you are good to go! We also keep daily medications and vitamins for the kids here along with their tubs of multigrain and rice cereal. We also keep Abby's miralax here. Poor thing!

A nice group of clean bottles and a mixing pitcher ready to be used! Since we are down to three bottle feedings a day, I'm only filling 12 bottles. Obviously, if you are doing more, make more! Keep in mind that powdered formula is good for 24 hours after being mixed and plan accordingly.

Another view of the bottle prepping station. Notice that the extra towel is there to keep the mixing mess to a minimum. Just shake it over the sink after making bottles to dispose of any spilled powder.

12 filled bottles ready to go in the refrigerator! The hardest part about this is making sure you have the correct bottle for the correct baby at the correct time. I fill all of one baby's bottles before moving on to the next. Then I line them up on the counter in order, or put them away in the refrigerator as they are made.

We designated the top shelf of our refrigerator for bottles and extra formula for cereal. Below each bottle, I taped the name of the baby who gets that row. I did this way back when they first came home so that helpers would know exactly which one belonged to each baby. Grab one from each row, pop in the crockpot 15 minutes before feeding (times may vary by crockpot), assemble the vent, stem, ring, and nipple along with any thickeners, extra formula for calories, or vitamins, and you are good to go!

Do all of this a few times and it becomes second nature. I'm pretty sure that Sean and I can do it in our sleep now. We often tag team the bottle prepping with one of us filling the pitcher and measuring out the powdered formula and the other pouring the bottles.

I would love to hear how our method works for you if you try it! Please leave a comment if you do give it a whirl...or swish! :)

***********************

In other news, we are down to our last three days of the Top 25 Moms of Multiples Blog Contest!

Don't forget that you can vote once every 24 hours until the contest ends on Wednesday at 3pm central time. Right now we are in second place, and we would love your vote! And thanks for putting up with the reminders for the last couple of weeks. It's been quite the race!

How to Bathe Multiples FAST!

This is the first installment in an awesome series that's I'm going to call, "How do they do it?" We have had so many people ask how we do the basics with quadruplets like bathing, feeding, bedtime, etc. Lots of blogs have tutorials, so in similar fashion, here is our Bathing Quadruplets FAST Tutorial!

You know, in case you ever find yourself completely outnumbered by babies on a regular basis. :)

First of all, figure out a way to corral all of the kids. Before they started crawling, we could just throw a bunch of blankets down on the floor of our room for them to lie on. Now that they are mobile, we use the Superyard XT Gate to keep them contained. Much easier than pulling them out of the closet, or dragging them back out from under our bed. Both are kind of dusty and someday I need to get around to cleaning them.

Throw some blankets down inside the play yard along with a few toys to keep them entertained.

Line up all of their clothes along the edge of the bed. I always put them in birth order to make it easy to keep track of who wears what.

Add the correct size diaper on top of the clothes. Our kids wear different sizes and we don't want to accidentally put too small of a diaper on a kid. Leaks are no good if they've just had a bath (okay, are leaks ever good??)

And then their towel and washcloth go on top. So now each kid has their stack in the order in which they will use the items: wash cloth in bath tub, towel dry off, diaper on, then socks, and finally clothes. No digging around while you have a bare butt crawling away from you.

This is also the point where I realized that I didn't have the correct setting on the camera flash. :)

Set up a diaper changing/lotioning station. Notice that this station is right next to their clothes. Keep it simple!

Put some water in your tub with some toys. I figured out that while squirty water toys are fun, they get very slippery. The kids are happier if the toys have rings that they can hold onto. Bath time goes quicker if you aren't chasing toys AND trying to wash kids.

Strip the kids and put them in the play yard.

This is the part where tag-teaming really comes in handy! One person strips off diapers, brings them to the tub, and then dries them off, lotions them down, and dresses them. The other person sits in the tub and scrubs away. In our case, I wash them and Sean dresses them. Sitting in the tub works best since I can brace them with my legs and scrub them down quickly.

This is what it looks like:
1) Mommy is handed Abby. She starts washing her.
2) Then Daddy dries, diapers, lotions, and dresses Caleb who just finished his bath.
3) Caleb goes back in the play yard.
4) Daddy goes back to the tub to get Abby. Abby goes into the play yard sans diaper for a minute while Daddy strips the diaper off of Elijah. Mommy, meanwhile, has changed out the bath water and is ready when Daddy passes Elijah into the tub.
5) Then Mommy washes Elijah while Daddy dries, diapers, lotions, and dresses Abby.
6) Continue until all babies are clean.

It's also important to take a few minutes to play with them as you go! Hehe! I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure this photo of Ellie is included in her wedding slideshow. :-)

Tip: Make it easy on yourself and put a laundry basket right outside the bedroom door for wet towels as you finish with them. After baths are done, everything is easily carried to the washer.

And this is the finished project! Clean, relaxed, tired babies! They always take great naps after baths!

Elijah

Daddy and Ellie

Caleb and Abby

Sean and I can give our quadruplets baths in 40 minutes by doing it this way. That includes set up, baths, and clean up which is pretty darn fast, in my opinion! We've tried baths in the baby bathtub, sink, with them in the big bathtub and us leaning over the edge, and showering. This is by far the easiest, quickest way to get through all of them.

By the way, this also works for a singleton, just without all of the repeats. :)

This is the first installment in an awesome series that's I'm going to call, "How do they do it?" We have had so many people ask how we do the basics with quadruplets like bathing, feeding, bedtime, etc. Lots of blogs have tutorials, so in similar fashion, here is our Bathing Quadruplets FAST Tutorial!

You know, in case you ever find yourself completely outnumbered by babies on a regular basis. :)

First of all, figure out a way to corral all of the kids. Before they started crawling, we could just throw a bunch of blankets down on the floor of our room for them to lie on. Now that they are mobile, we use the Superyard XT Gate to keep them contained. Much easier than pulling them out of the closet, or dragging them back out from under our bed. Both are kind of dusty and someday I need to get around to cleaning them.

Throw some blankets down inside the play yard along with a few toys to keep them entertained.

Line up all of their clothes along the edge of the bed. I always put them in birth order to make it easy to keep track of who wears what.

Add the correct size diaper on top of the clothes. Our kids wear different sizes and we don't want to accidentally put too small of a diaper on a kid. Leaks are no good if they've just had a bath (okay, are leaks ever good??)

And then their towel and washcloth go on top. So now each kid has their stack in the order in which they will use the items: wash cloth in bath tub, towel dry off, diaper on, then socks, and finally clothes. No digging around while you have a bare butt crawling away from you.

This is also the point where I realized that I didn't have the correct setting on the camera flash. :)

Set up a diaper changing/lotioning station. Notice that this station is right next to their clothes. Keep it simple!

Put some water in your tub with some toys. I figured out that while squirty water toys are fun, they get very slippery. The kids are happier if the toys have rings that they can hold onto. Bath time goes quicker if you aren't chasing toys AND trying to wash kids.

Strip the kids and put them in the play yard.

This is the part where tag-teaming really comes in handy! One person strips off diapers, brings them to the tub, and then dries them off, lotions them down, and dresses them. The other person sits in the tub and scrubs away. In our case, I wash them and Sean dresses them. Sitting in the tub works best since I can brace them with my legs and scrub them down quickly.

This is what it looks like:
1) Mommy is handed Abby. She starts washing her.
2) Then Daddy dries, diapers, lotions, and dresses Caleb who just finished his bath.
3) Caleb goes back in the play yard.
4) Daddy goes back to the tub to get Abby. Abby goes into the play yard sans diaper for a minute while Daddy strips the diaper off of Elijah. Mommy, meanwhile, has changed out the bath water and is ready when Daddy passes Elijah into the tub.
5) Then Mommy washes Elijah while Daddy dries, diapers, lotions, and dresses Abby.
6) Continue until all babies are clean.

It's also important to take a few minutes to play with them as you go! Hehe! I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure this photo of Ellie is included in her wedding slideshow. :-)

Tip: Make it easy on yourself and put a laundry basket right outside the bedroom door for wet towels as you finish with them. After baths are done, everything is easily carried to the washer.

And this is the finished project! Clean, relaxed, tired babies! They always take great naps after baths!

Elijah

Daddy and Ellie

Caleb and Abby

Sean and I can give our quadruplets baths in 40 minutes by doing it this way. That includes set up, baths, and clean up which is pretty darn fast, in my opinion! We've tried baths in the baby bathtub, sink, with them in the big bathtub and us leaning over the edge, and showering. This is by far the easiest, quickest way to get through all of them.

By the way, this also works for a singleton, just without all of the repeats. :)