How to pick the right bottle?
I bet when you signed up for a baby registry you were overwhelmed by the options for bottles sizes, shapes and then nipples shapes and sizes.
“Most like breast”
“Anti-colic”
“Natural latch”
“Like the breast”.
Don’t fall for that!
All of the marketing makes it very confusing for new parents.
NOT one single bottle on the market is like the breast.
The crazy part is that marketers know that parents are choosing or needing to use a bottle to feed their babies and still want to breastfeed so they use tactics to entice you. They know it’s a problem.
But whether you are breastfeeding or not there are bottles that are shaped better than others.
When we talk about nipples it isn’t that babies are confused about nipples, not at all. They know the difference between a plastic/silicone nipple from Mom. Trust me.
So what’s the problem? Why do you hear some babies prefer the bottle over breast?
It’s the flow… they realize that there is no work involved in bottle feeding so they refuse the breast because it’s work to remove the milk. Read my blog post about Paced bottle feeding.
So when we purchase a bottle there’s a few factors to consider:
1. Flow rate- is how fast the milk comes out of the nipple.
Most brands have varying rates of flow/speed rates and often suggest you move up as baby get’s older.
They are often labelled premie, slow, medium, standard
There is no standardization for names or for flow rates in any of these bottles- one slow flow bottles flow rate will vary from another
You can’t even be sure that 2 niples in the same package will have the same flow rate!
When it comes time to choose which one we prefer the slowest rate possible.
2. Nipple shape- is the shape and slope of the nipple and rim
we want babies to get as much of the nipple as possible like an at breastfeed where they get a good mouthful of nipple
this is very difficult with a bottle that has a rapidly changing shape from really wide to narrow
look for nipples that gradually change shape from narrow to wide
nipple tip: look what your nipple looks like after a feed- usually nice and round
when choosing a nipple tip choose a tip that is most like the nipple
no tilted nipple no orthodontic nipples- if it doesn’t look like your nipple AVOID it
So here’s my recommendation buy a variety of the 2.
1 narrow base (like Dr. Brown’s) and 1 wider (Lasinoh or Evenflo). Then buy that companies slowest flow nipple Dr. Brown’s premie nipple and Evenflo slow flow.
Bottle size: Babies on average only EVER eat 3-4 ounces per feed. So the one size is adequate.
Have any questions about bottles?