Time & Leg Saver

Let's get this into context.

We live in a three storey house. Kitchen on the ground floor, and two floors above that - our bedroom.

My daughter, Avy, is now three weeks old, and as with her four year old brother, James, we'll keep her in our room at night until she's six weeks old. Then she'll move downstairs into her own room. There it'll be warmer, and will get her used to her own space. Fear not - she won't be left alone, we'll have all the normal monitors and stuff like we had with James.

The theory is - like James she should sleep through without our interference once she's on her own. We hope.

Anyway, to the product in question. Traipsing up & down three flights of stairs twice or three times a night to get a chilled bottle and warm it up is NOT fun. We did that in our last house, and it's a pain. (You do get to see some interesting late night TV though...)

So, we bought one of these things, and frankly - I didn't have much faith. It's basically a coolbox, with an iced element in it, and a hot plate. To warm a bottle from the cooler, you fill the hotplate with a measure of water, switch her on, and a few minutes later, a correct temperature bottle is ready.

Now I thought that it wasn't worth having.
Surely its too simple,
it's not clever enough,
it's not that useful,
there's too much planning and work involved,
it can't work,
who cares about walking up & down stairs, etc.
and... - I put up all the protests that a man who is bored shopping for baby stuff before its born can put up.

But after three weeks, this thing's a Godsend. Plugged in bedside/Cribside, you can warm a fresh bottle almost without having to wake up. I'm not kidding, this thing saves at least fifteen minutes - sometimes more - per feed. And 15 minutes at 3am are much dearer than they are during the day.

It has drawbacks - it can only store two bottles at a time. (we keep a third in another cool bottle holder thing). It sometimes doesn't warm through. It sometimes warms through too much, and the bottles then have to be cooled. And you have to remember to freeze the coolant thing.

But on the whole, this thing is worth a fortune. If you bottle feed, and don't sleep in the same room as your refrigerator/ microwave/ kettle/ whatever you use to store bottles, then you really should have one.

Excellent product. If only they could make something that actually made up the formula.