Ah, Regina George and Mean Girls will always occupy a special place in my heart; it may be 17 years post-release, and a veritable lifetime later, but hey, there’s always a place for a good Tina Fey reference in a mum’s blog review of baby bottles.
Our baby was exclusively bottle fed. Fed a combination of breast milk and formula (more on that later) if you’re curious, but exclusively bottle fed from dia uno.
She was born preemie, 34+6, and started off in the NICU with 2oz (60mL) bottles and single use Enfamil rubber nipples. She thrived on this combination and rapidly progressed to requiring a 2.7oz (80mL) bottle, again, with the same disposable rubber nipple, but now in a standard flow rather than a slow flow format.
By week three, three and a half of life, however, she had already begun to outgrow the 2-2.7oz NICU bottles as her volumes were increasing. She was consistently eating 3oz (90mL) and we rapidly needed to find a solution for her, with a larger bottle, but a nipple she could take well to.
I had purchased Como Tomo baby bottles prior to her birth and brought four 5oz Como Tomo bottles with slow flow nipples to Los Angeles with me in preparation, I thought, for this moment. The reason I purchased the Como Tomo bottle was two-fold. One, I recalled that my nephew when born, at 38 weeks, vehemently rejected the supplies painstakingly pre-purchased by his parents and would not drink from the Dr Brown bottles they had on hand. This necessitated my dad making an emergency middle of the night trip to purchase some Como Tomo baby bottles to avert starvation. My nephew took to these immediately, likely because of the gentle rounder, wider shape and soft flexible nipple. My nephew was both breast and bottle fed and I suspect that the Gaudi-esque Como Tomo, which mimics organic natural forms, therefore appealed to him. Two, a very nice sales lady at what is perhaps my favorite Toronto baby store, Love Me Do Baby and Maternity in Liberty Village, recommended the Como Tomo bottles. And, finally, if I’m honest, I thought the bottles with their flexible silicone design, lime green and papaya pink rims, and ovoid form somehow looked cute yet chic, modern, and perhaps even a little bit sophisticated.
All that said, when the moment of truth finally came, I’m sad to say, Como Tomo did not work well with my baby. We tried it repeatedly, at intervals, in the first three weeks with her. She’s able to drink from it successfully, and she’s too sweet a baby to outright reject anything, but we do notice that she has to work to drink from it and it takes her significantly longer than drinking from her good old rubber single use Enfamil NICU nipple.
We have quite possibly, the sweetest baby nurse known to man, Susana. Susana is from Bolivia originally with over a decade of experience specializing in newborn care and the grueling job of night nursing. She is unfailingly kind to our baby, and when she noticed that our baby girl was struggling with the Como Tomo bottles, which, by the way are made of plastic (a no no in Beverly Hills), she brought us some baby bottles to try. Susana explained to us that, in her decade of newborn nursing experience, Dr Brown’s Anti-colic bottles, made of glass, were the number one most-preferred bottle among baby nurses and moms alike.
I will confess that, left to my own devices, I had no intentions of purchasing the Dr Brown’s bottles. Although I knew that they were highly recommended, and very popular, there seemed to be too many fiddly bits and bobs, generating too complicated a washing-experience for my liking. I will, however, also confess that once I tried the Dr Brown’s bottles, I was thoroughly impressed and I am grateful to Susana for introducing me to something that my lazy-butt would otherwise have had me, and my baby, lose out on. I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of the glass Dr Brown’s bottles, and even more so, by the anti-colic venting system which truly helped our baby, visibly reducing gas-related discomfort. As an aside, now that I’ve actually tried it, I don’t find the Dr Brown’s bottles any more difficult to wash than any other brand.
That said, as much as we loved the Dr Brown’s bottles, and wanted to fully embrace them, we weren’t successful in making the switch from our baby’s beloved Enfamil single use rubber nipple. Like the Como Tomo, although she could drink from the Wide neck Dr Brown’s bottle, and had less gas to boot, she was slow in drinking and it was a bit of a struggle. At first, we thought it was because she was not yet mature enough for the standard level 1, 0M+ nipple so we ordered level 0, preemie nipples for the wide neck bottles. The problem persisted and she struggled to get through the same volumes she was crushing with her previous set up. Annoying as it was, we went back to our old sub par low volume NICU bottles and disposable nipples, having to top up milk as she guzzled her way through the tiny bottles. I knew that it was not sustainable to cap out at a 2.7oz (80mL) bottle just because the Enfamil single use nipple was perfect for her as her volumes were already pushing the limit, and would only continue to increase.
I studied the bottles in question, and in particular, the nipples, to see what the issue was. I noticed that it wasn’t so much a matter of flow, in terms of the number of holes in the nipple or rate of droplet flow, but a matter of nipple shape and design itself. The Enfamil nipples are narrow, straight, and stiff — completely unnatural. The bottles she struggled with, both Como Tomo and Dr Brown’s Anti-Colic Wide, are wide necked with a wide open face, gently curved and rounded, with a soft flexible, flimsy, even nipple — both a reasonable facsimile of a human breast. This was my aha moment when I realized that, sad as it may be, our baby girl has never suckled at a human breast. She knows how to suck, from an artificial nipple, but not how to suckle at the breast. Therefore, I realized, we could buy her a bigger and better bottle, as long as we could find one with a less “realistic” nipple.
We solved our problem by purchasing two types of bottles, from two different manufacturers, that successfully replicate the more artificial experience of the stiffer narrower nipple our baby girl thrives with. I purchased Dr Brown’s Anti-colic bottles, Narrow — they come in both plastic and glass options like their Wide breast-mimicking cousins — with the standard level 1, 0M+ nipple, and baby girl tore through her milk like a champ. I also purchased Philips Avent Anti-colic bottles in the 4oz size as a travel option. Although the Philips Avent bottles are plastic rather than glass, the single advantage they offer over the Dr Brown’s bottles is that they do not require you to place a disc shaped stopper inside the bottle when traveling to prevent leaks. This is the one and only thing I dislike about the Dr Brown’s bottles as I find it a little annoying to have to dismantle the bottle when out to remove the stopper with perhaps less than clean hands all while managing not to drop or contaminate anything, store said stopper cleanly, then replace it once baby finishes drinking. I have yet to try the Philips Avent Anti-colic bottle on the road to test for leaks but will report back once I do. I will add that in a pinch, I think we would be just fine using her Como Tomo bottles for feeding when out, now that she is a bit more mature and her face is a bit larger.
I have a separate, shorter, post in which I share a simple algorithm to help you select a bottle for your baby. Here, I wanted to share our back story and our experiences with finding the best bottles to provide more context around that algorithm. No ifs ands or buts about it, it’s a fact that bottle fed babies have more gas than breast fed, due to the difference in mechanism of sucking versus suckling, as well as the presence of the bottle itself. Simply put, given the choice between a vented anti-colic bottle and a non-vented bottle, now that I have seen a bottle fed baby in action, I would choose a vented anti-colic bottle any day to reduce gas. The most important divergence point becomes, is your baby exclusively bottle fed or mixing between breast and bottle? An exclusively bottle fed baby will do better with a narrower bottle and a narrower teat and stiffer nipple. A baby who is breast feeding, and bottle fed only at times, will do better with a wider bottle with a more open face and softer nipple. Of the big players, both Dr Brown’s and Philip’s Avent offer vented systems and appropriately shaped bottle and nipple options for both exclusively bottle fed and breast/bottle fed babies. Dr Brown’s has the added variety of offering glass and plastic options whereas Philips Avent bottles are, to my knowledge, offered only in plastic. Modern BPA-free plastics are thought to be very good, but — and maybe Los Angeles is rubbing off on me — my personal preference is a glass bottle. From what I’ve seen the Dr Brown’s glass bottles are very durable, and other than a little bit of added weight, I’m not seeing a downside to a glass bottle.
For a condensed version of this article, and a simple algorithm to help you select the appropriate bottle, check out my post, Bottles and Models. Happy hunting and I wish you greater success and fewer wasted bottles than I had!
Milk & Money 