When each of my babies were born, I got to be a new dad all over again. One of my jobs to support my wife when she went back to work was when she was done pumping, I would take the milk, pour it into bags, label, and then freeze it. Then I would clean the parts and get the pump ready for her to take with her to work.
Pouring the collected milk from a bottle into a bag doesn’t sound like it would be a tough job, but depending on the bag, the day, or which kid was crying on my leg at the time, pouring milk could be downright frustrating.
Having the milk in bags made it super convenient to heat up a bottle though. Even with a crying baby in my arms I could run a bag under warm tap water until it was the right temperature, but pouring from a bag with no structure into a bottle was even more frustrating.
Before I worked out how to contort my hand just right to hold the bag open, provide it structure, and pour steadily, I’m sure I wasted countless ounces of that liquid gold that my wife had invested so much effort into making.
Even then I often spilled.
Whoever said don’t cry over spilled milk has never had to watch the mother of their children struggle with production in the first few days, weeks, or months of breastfeeding.
I found out about the Twist Breastmilk Collection, Storage, and Feeding System by Kiinde and I was sold for just one reason. Sure there’s a lot of super awesome gadgets. It can accommodate baby food as your baby gets older so there’s only one system to buy. It has a spoon attachment so there’s no need to dirty up extra dishes. It even has a storage rack for the freezer so you’re not having to find space to lay it flat to freeze.
The one thing that sold me was that it has adapters so the pouch hooks directly up to the pump. The pouches then fit perfectly into the bottle attachment. There’s no transferring of milk from bottle to bag to bottle again, and there’s no step to spill the milk. I could store the milk by taking it off the pump, putting on the lid and tossing it into the freezer. I could make a bottle with one hand while holding a crying baby in the other without worrying about spilling everywhere.
It’s got a lot of other cool stuff too, but it made supporting my wife easier. The starter kit, which comes with the pump adapters, twenty pouches, the storage rack, two bottles with a slow flow, a medium flow, and a quick flow nipple, and two nipple brushes runs about $40. It’s totally worth it.