Getting To the Bottom of Bottles
Which Bottle Is The Best Bottle??
There you are. Gathering supplies for your incoming baby.
And it’s time to find a bottle.
Surprise! There are 10,000 options to pick from!
How do you know which one to get?
The wide base with a short nipple?
A small base with a long nipple?
A firm nipple?
A soft nipple?
Why do these ones have filters and those ones not?
Is Dr. Browns reallllly the best one? It’s the one that everyone has but, that’s a lot of parts to wash…
The sheer volume of options has many parents putting off bottle choice to the very last second! …Let your mind with one phrase;
It does not matter what bottle you buy, what matters is how you feed the baby.
That’s right! You don’t have to buy Dr. Brown’s!
You only need to feed your baby using a slow flow nipple and a method that controls the flow of milk for them so they aren’t guzzling it, so they can properly breathe and swallow, as they drink. The best way to do that is to use the PACED method of feeding, shown in the video at the bottom of this blog!
If you use the paced method of feeding, you can choose whatever bottle you want to…! …to an extent. (Okay, there are some bottles to avoid, and I’ll tell you which ones and why in just a minute.)
What do I recommend?
Not the one with the most parts to wash with a pipe cleaner. That’s for sure.
My favorite bottle is Evenflo Balance Plus Standard Bottle because the nipple is evenly tapered in a cone shape, it is average softness, and average width, and it is designed to prevent gas without using a crazy filter.
That doesn’t mean it’s the best bottle for your baby!
My very best advice:
Get a few different types and see which bottle they like best, and don’t commit to 10 of one type before you know what your baby will like!
Be sure to keep in mind how difficult washing will be! If you won’t thoroughly clean the bottle’s filters every single time, don’t buy the bottles that have intricate filter designs unless your baby absolutely needs it. And…
Do not buy the 4-ounce version of the bottles! You do not need them! Babies will be drinking over 4 ounces of milk at each bottle in no time at all – those little tiny 4 ounce bottles are not worth your investment!
Which Bottles Should Actually Be Avoided??
In my *experience* from what I have seen, some bottles just don’t work well with most babies. Those bottles are…
Tommy Tippee - The nipple is too wide and too long, Baby can’t latch.
Como Tomo - The nipple is also too wide and too long, and the bottle and nipple collapses when baby does manage to latch.
MAM bottles. Babies can latch on pretty well, but the shape of the nipple changes at level 1 and that’s odd to me, plus, they are difficult to assemble and if you don’t assemble perfectly, they leak everything everywhere.
Bottles that don’t have slow flow nipples (you’ll have to investigate but so many advertise as 0 to 3 month flow level but are just way too fast for the baby!)
That’s all for this post! Thank you for reading and as always, please reach out to me if you have any questions about your newborn!
PACED METHOD —> https://www.mamanatural.com/paced-bottle-feeding/
