Bottle Warmer

When my daughter was an infant I had very little sleep. This often happens to parents of infants, though there are a small number that are blessed with a sleeping and calm baby. I was not one of those lucky ones. Most of that time is a blur, and I have vague memories of buying and using a bottle warmer to heat up her formula in the nighttime hours. I could not breastfeed, so we had to use formula. It was more of a pain than breastfeeding might have been, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter. So formula, and all that comes with it, was what we had to use.

I got the bottle warmer for very little money, but it worked for well. It didn’t last very long, but it lasted long enough for me to come out of my haze. Things were tough then as we were dealing with a family death at the same time. I have memories of getting up and using the bottle warmer, but most of them are not clear memories. That is why I am glad that I had one that was simple to use and worked like a dream without much input from me.

You have to be careful with a bottle warmer as some can make the formula (or breast milk) too hot. If you are tired enough, you may not think to check. Though you can warm bottles in the microwave you should never do it. Microwaves tend to warm the bottles unevenly, leaving scalding pockets of formula in the bottle. It might feel ok to your hand when you take it out, but you could easily burn your baby’s mouth. A bottle warmer is by far the better choice as long as you buy the right ones.

The bottle warmer that I bought used steam to warm the bottle. It worked rather fast, and I knew it would work right. I did have to make sure that I kept the bottom of it full of water however, or it simply would not work. There was nothing worse than setting the bottle in the bottle warmer for the required time only to find that the formula was still cold. If you get one that you like, you might want to buy two of them. Though mine was good, it stopped working and I didn’t have a replacement.