Because I’ve recently mentioned that I’ve spent a small fortune on baby bottles, all in the quest for that which my oh-so-particular child will tolerate, I thought I would provide a review, as a public service and all. Because I need to stop spending my pumping time and loads of money online shopping and do something less expensive and more constructive I’m kind and generous that way.
First. We begin with what I use, and why.
(LOOK! More than a full day’s worth of stockpiled liquid gold! Unbelievable!!)
I don’t know if my baby has colic, GER, GERD, or some other unspecified gastro-intestinal issue, but he tends to be fussy at times, and barely tolerates a bottle, let alone a breast. There are a number of bottles on the market that claim to reduce or prevent colic, and there are camps of people who strongly favor one or another. We seem to have the most success with the Dr. Brown’s line, but I’m not emotionally attached to it. We used the wide neck version with BB nearly four years ago, and liked them well enough then. They had a nice shape with a comfortable hold, and the wide mouth made them easy to clean. We also used the Avent bottles, and liked them as well. However, with the crisis du jour regarding BPA, I traded in my BPA Dr. Brown’s and Avent bottles for BPA-free Dr. Brown’s and Born Free bottles.
I started with the Dr. Brown’s preemie bottles, and really liked them for the preemie slowest of slow flow nipples and also the tiny two-ounce size, which was just right for my newborn. However, they were still BPA bottles, so I decided to exchange them for non-BPA. The options are 3.5 oz glass, 4 oz polypropylene, or 8 oz polypropylene. I ended up with some of each. Unfortunately, the valve reservoir stem is a different length for each different bottle size, and I could only find the long 8oz version reservoir stem available in the replacement parts section.
I don’t care for the actual bottle part of the Dr. Brown’s polypro line. It’s a hard plastic, and it’s completely cylindrical. It doesn’t feel particularly good to hold, and because of the special valve system, the bottles tend to be taller to accommodate the valve. This makes them a bit bulky and unwieldy. Especially the 8 oz size. That bottle seems to be about as big as my baby, so I put the 8 oz bottles away for when he’s older and bigger, but harvested the valves and nipples for use with other bottles now.
The glass bottles are nice, but they’re heavy, and as soon as my baby can hold his own bottle, I’ll probably give them up, because the last thing I need is a heavy glass projectile in the hands of a wee one just getting used to his motor skills.
I decided to find other bottles that could be used with the Dr. Brown’s valve system, but because each size bottle has a different length stem, and because replacement stems are only available for the long 8oz size, I had to cut the valve stems to fit the appropriate bottle. This makes for a tangled and confusing mess of parts, which is best not left to the spouse, who will, without fail, grumble exceedingly if asked or expected to warm up a bottle of stored milk and find the appropriate nipple/collar/valve/reservoir stem, and who will, inevitably, select any stem without consideration, jam it onto any bottle, then curse and sputter when the bottle leaks or hand it to me to feed the by then screaming child, in which case I will mutter something unkind about general laziness and lack of attention to detail. Not conducive to marital bliss.
The collars actually fit the Medela bottles that I use for pumping, however, the Medela bottles don’t have many threads and they sometimes leak. They’re not all that comfortable to hold, either, so I just stick to them for collecting the milk, and transfer the expressed milk to the bottles that I like — the old fashioned inexpensive Evenflo hexagonal bottles. If only they made them in a 5 or 6 oz size. I buy the 4 oz size for now, and store the milk in 3 oz lots.
And now for the rejects. Although I like the Born Free, the nipples tend to collapse a bit, and the baby doesn’t seem to like them as well, so they’re set aside for a few months, until he’s a bit more coordinated.
He struggled with most of the nipples pictured above. The breast flow version is good in concept but the outer nipple completely collapses in use and seems nothing like a breast at all. He chokes on the Soothie nipple and gets tangled up with the Nuk nipple. The cheap Gerber style with the lime green collar leaks like a sieve, but the threads work with the Dr. Brown’s parts, so they’re the last resort storage bottles, used only when I run out of everything else (because I don’t care for the odd trapezoidal shape, which isn’t particularly comfortable to grasp). The bottle on the far left is a different Gerber variety, and it actually is the best tolerated of the lot above. It’s not BPA free though, so just in case, we’re letting it be. I did try to do a BPA exchange at Babies -R- Us with the four outer bottles, but they weren’t on the list, like the Dr. Brown’s and Avent varieties, for whatever reason.
I was planning to be more comprehensive with the rejects, but I’ve grown weary of this post. At least it kept me from Amazon.com and eBay for this particular expression session, and that was the point, in part.
