Bottles: 

I thought I would need more bottles than I do, but since I breastfeed and only give my babies a bottle if I’m away for a few hours, I only have a few bottles and that’s worked really well for us. I haven’t tried a lot of other bottles, but both of my babies have taken this one right away. It has a slow flow nipple, so luckily we’ve never had any issues going from bottle to breast. It was recommended to me in the hospital to wait until one month to give her a bottle to make sure we’d established a good latch, but I did have to give her a bottle for the first time at two weeks when I had to have a follow-up surgery, and it never affected our breastfeeding journey.

Burp Cloths:

I love these ones, because they’re so soft and they come in a pack of eight. I keep one on our bedside table, one in the diaper bag, and one in our living room. Having one that’s in arms reach at all times is super necessary, because you literally never know when your baby is going to spit up. Luna hardly ever spits up (luckily), which means we only have one pack and that’s honestly plenty. I know all babies are different, but let me just say, people kept telling me I would be covered in spit up and Luna has only ever spit up on me a handful of times. She spits up, but most of the time it’s when she’s lying down, so I’ve never even had to change my shirt from spit up. So it is possible that your baby won’t spit up all the time. It’s also possible that they will and there’s no way to know, haha.  

Pump:

Since I work from home and I’m hardly ever away from Luna, I hardly pump, BUT when I do pump, I use this hand pump and honestly, I love it. I struggled with pumping a lot with my first and this one makes it easy to use, it’s not expensive, and you can easily bring it with you on-the-go. I also used the Elvie with my daughter, and since it takes me a long time to pump enough to be worth it, I love the freedom of being able to pop this in my bra and go for a drive or get up and make breakfast while I’m pumping and not have to be sitting down and plugged into a wall. It worked well for what it was but I didn’t love it, so I’m trying the Willow Go this time around. It’s also so portable, which makes it easy for travel and that was a major deciding factor for me. Full disclosure, I originally went with the Elvie because you can buy them individually, and I only bought one, because it’s pretty expensive and our insurance doesn’t cover it. It’s great for how much I use it, but if you can get both, you’ll get twice as much milk in the same amount of time. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that before, haha. I like these storage bags for milk that I pump and freeze. 

Nipple Butter:

What I Didn’t Need:

Nursing pillow: With my first, I ordered a nursing pillow, and I loved the idea, but I ended up returning it because I literally never used it. And I’ve never used one with my second either. I know some people swear by their nursing pillows, but I could barely sit up straight the first few months, so this type of pillow just didn’t work for me, and it’s always been easier for me to just cradle them in my arms and use a pillow on our couch or something to support my arm if I need it.

Bottle Warmer: If you plan on exclusively breastfeeding, I wouldn’t worry about one of these. It depends on your baby for sure, but my daughter would literally take a bottle that’s freezing cold and my son is too picky about the temperature either. Both my babies have only taken a bottle about once a week (at most), so even though I thought I needed one of these, I very rarely use it. If you plan on using formula, there are a lot more things you’ll want to take into consideration, like a bottle warmer, more bottles, a Baby Brezza, and a sterilizer.

Nursing Pads: I very rarely leak, and when I do it’s usually in the middle of the night. I know that seems like a miracle to some people, and I’d never heard of anyone never leaking while nursing or establishing their milk supply, but it hasn’t happened to me either time around, so I’ve never used pads or anything to stop leaking.