If you read yesterdays blog, 6 Tips To Save Hundreds On Baby Items, then you know one of my tips to save on bottles is to not buy a ton of bottles at first, and to only open a couple. This way if your baby doesn’t take to that particular bottle, you won’t have wasted a ton of money. Keep the receipts for whatever bottles you buy and if you need to return them, make sure you do so within the return period.

But here’s the biggest money saving tip I wish I knew! If you are going to breastfeed, and you plan on pumping, see if the storage bottles that you pump into can also be used as feeding bottles. When I was pregnant with Joey we chose to use Avent bottles. I have no idea why, that’s just what we chose. My breast pump was a Medela so of course I used Medela brand storage bottles to pump onto. I would pump into the Medela storage bottles, they would go into the fridge, and then when Joey needed to eat and I was at work, whoever was watching him, would transfer the milk from the Medela bottle into the Avent bottle. The middle of the tops on the storage containers have the days of the week listed. You can rotate them to indicate what day of the week you pumped the milk on. Then they pop out so you can wash them properly. But we had no idea that Medela made nipples that you could pop into the tops to turn them into feeding bottles! Not only would this have saved us money on the extra bottles, but by using double the bottles, we had double to wash.

I’m so glad this time around we know better. We didn’t save the Avent bottles that Joey used because they got cloudy after a while and Joey would bite the nipples, which could cause tears in them. But it’s nice to know that we won’t be buying more for the new baby- just nipples to fit onto the Medela storage containers!