The Feeding Edit: What Earns a Place in Your Kitchen

WORTH IT  Tommee Tippee glass bottles  £10–20 each

We used these from the very first feed and our newborn took them with zero fuss, which is not a given. Glass feels lovely, doesn't scratch or cloud the way plastic does over time. It doesn't hang onto smells and you can sterilise it into oblivion. Yes it's heavier and yes a dropped one on a tiled floor is a heart-stopping moment, but for the everyday home bottle it's hard to beat.

Verdict: Start with a couple rather than a full set of any brand, because babies have opinions and you won't know theirs until they arrive. But if yours takes to glass, it'll outlast every plastic bottle in the house.

→ Shop Tommee Tippee glass bottles

WORTH IT The Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep  ~£140

A machine that makes a bottle at the exact right temperature in around 90 seconds. We know it's a chunky bit of kit and a proper spend AND plenty of people manage perfectly well without one. But...if you've got a baby who flat-out refuses anything even slightly cool (ours would clamp her mouth shut at the first hint of a not-quite-warm-enough bottle), this is the thing that saves the 2am standoff.

Verdict: The honest gripe: you get about two minutes to add the formula before it resets, which is a genuine faff if you're mid-nappy-change. But for a temperature-fussy baby, it earns its counter space. Worth it.

→ Shop the Perfect Prep

WORTH IT  The Elvie Pump  ~£249 single / £499 double

The wearable one that tucks into your (stretchy, ideally) bra with no wires and no tubes, so you can pump while getting on with life instead of being plugged into a wall / massive contraption for twenty minutes. It's quiet, it's discreet-ish and the hands-free element is very handy indeed.

Verdict: It does leak a little if you don't get the positioning exactly right, so there's a short learning curve. And it's a lot of money. Our honest take: worth it if you're going to pump regularly and especially if you're planning more than one baby to spread the cost across. Occasional pumper? A cheaper manual might do you fine.

→ Shop the Elvie Pump

WORTH IT  NAYDAYA Breast Saviour & Scar Saviour  ~£18–30 each

The Breast Saviour balm is lanolin-free and feels lovely on sore, cracked skin, which matters when you're applying it fifteen times a day. I also put it on my lips overnight, as it feels super nourishing. The Scar Saviour is the one to have on hand if you've had a c-section (we get into that whole saga in our c-section piece). Plus it's an independent British brand, big tick from us.

Verdict: Start the breast balm from the first feed, not once you're already cracked and wincing. Prevention is the entire game here. The scar balm waits until you're healed, but it's worth having ready.

→ Shop the NAYDAYA breast & scar bundle

OVERRATED  Dr Brown's anti-colic bottles  £12–16 each

Right, don't shoot us for this one. Loads of parents genuinely swear by Dr Brown's, and if your baby is colicky, the clinical anti-colic vent system has real evidence behind it and may be exactly what you need. So this is less “bad bottle” and more “know what you're signing up for.”

Verdict: Our baby wasn't colicky and for us the extra parts (teat, collar, reservoir, vent insert, the little tube) meant more bits to wash (at least two more than usual). If your baby is comfy on simpler bottles, you don't need the faff. If they're screaming with wind, ignore us and try them.

→ See Dr Brown's anti-colic bottles

OVERRATED  Bulk-buying breast pads  £6–12 a box

Every list tells you to stockpile these before the baby comes. Here's the thing nobody says: not everyone leaks buckets. Some of us (hello, small titty committee) barely troubled a breast pad the whole way through. You genuinely don't know what your body's going to do until it does it.

Verdict: Don't panic-buy six boxes on spec. Get one, see what happens, then stock up if you actually need them. And if you do, reusable bamboo pads are softer, kinder to the planet and less like wearing a crisp packet than the disposable ones.

→ See reusable bamboo breast pads

OVERRATED The Minbie (for us, at least) ~£10–15

The Minbie is designed to mimic the breast and help babies move between boob and bottle. For plenty of babies it does exactly that. Ours, though, had taken a break from bottles while we were breastfeeding, and when we came to reintroduce them, the Minbie was the one she looked at like we'd personally betrayed her.

Verdict: Not a knock on the bottle itself, more a reminder that bottle acceptance is deeply individual and at the whim of your baby. If you're reintroducing a bottle after a breastfeeding stretch, expect trial and error, and don't buy six of anything until your baby has cast their vote.

→ See the Minbie bottle

OVERRATED — The Nuby Rapid Cool ~£50

We wanted this one to work. Boiling water cooled to a safe feed temperature in minutes is exactly the problem you want solving on-the-go. Ours just never did it reliably. The light that tells you the milk is ready didn't register the temperature properly, and when that's the one job, it's hard to trust the rest of it. Nuby have a troubleshooting page about the light doing this, so we don't think it was only ours.

Verdict: If you've already got one and the light seems temperamental, check the temperature yourself rather than trusting it. Nuby are giving refunds to those affected. If you're still deciding, we'd maybe put the money towards a flask of cooled boiled water and live with the ten minute wait.

SURPRISINGLY BRILLIANT  The Nuby UV steriliser  ~£50–60
This Nuby product is great though. We had a steam steriliser and then discovered UV and genuinely never looked back. No water, no steam, no waiting for anything to cool, no descaling. Three minutes and done. It also zaps dummies, teethers, breast pump parts, small toys and, yes, even your revolting phone.

Verdict: The main unit fits 4-5 bottles at a time, so very handy for bulk-sterilising but it can ake up quite a bit of room so make sure you measure up first.

→ Shop the Nuby UV steriliser

SURPRISINGLY BRILLIANT  The Lansinoh bottle (the great reintroducer)  ~£7–10
After the great bottle-refusal standoff (see the Minbie, above), the Lansinoh NaturalWave bottle was the one our baby actually worked out really quickly. The teat size and shape seemed to just make sense to her when nothing else did.

Verdict: Every baby's different, so this isn't a promise. But if you're deep in the “she won't take any bottle” spiral, it's a cheap, simple one to try. Sometimes the answer isn't the fanciest bottle, it's the one that happens to click.

→ Shop the Lansinoh bottle

SURPRISINGLY BRILLIANT  The Haakaa  ~£15
A one-piece silicone pump that suctions onto the boob you're not feeding from and quietly catches all the let-down that would otherwise soak into a muslin. No wires, no faff, about fifteen quid.

Verdict: Over a week, all that caught let-down adds up to a genuine bottle's worth of milk, which is a stretch of sleep while someone else does a feed. Cult status entirely earned. Just don't knock it over, because there is no cry quite like spilled liquid gold.

→ Shop the Haakaa

SURPRISINGLY BRILLIANT  Liewood muslins  ~£15–20 a pack

You will end up owning an absurd number of muslins. This is simply the law. They are burp cloth, bib, sun shade, nursing cover, comfort blanket, emergency mop and everything in between. Given you're going to be looking at them roughly nine hundred times a day, they may as well be nice.

Verdict: Liewood ones have genuinely cute designs and, more usefully, the fabric dries quickly, which matters when they're in permanent rotation through the wash. Buy more than you think you need. Then buy a few more.

→ Shop Liewood muslins

None of this kit will make feeding a newborn easy. It's relentless whichever way you do it. No gadget changes the fact that a tiny person needs milk from you at 4am and does not care how tired you are. What the good stuff does is shave the edges off. It buys you a bottle at the right temperature without a standoff, a stretch of sleep while someone else feeds, a sore-nipple balm that actually soothes, one fewer thing to panic-buy. Small mercies, but at 4am small mercies are everything.