Dr. Brown’s bottles. Worth it?
Mikayla is a little over two months old and besides the necessary medicine (and a few Shiloh hairs) the only thing that has gone in her mouth is breast milk. In fact, only a small minority of her feedings have ever come from a bottle. BUT… when a bottle is in use, you can bet I am at the other end of it. When Beth is at class M-Th morning, I usually feed her once or twice.
This whole bottle thing was bit overwhelming for me. We have 10 different styles of bottles and that is only half of what Target sells. In fact, when Mikayla first started bottle feeding, I had to set a morning aside just to figure out which was which.
For the most part we have standard Medela bottles and fancy Dr. Brown’s bottles. Both are the same size both get milk to Mikayla. But, the Dr. Brown’s have a special venting contraption.
The vent system fully vents the bottle for vacuum-free feeding, which we call positive-pressure flow, similar to breastfeeding. As the baby feeds, air is channeled from the nipple collar through the vent system, bypassing the breastmilk or formula, to the back of the bottle. ~Dr. Brown’s website.
Special Vent Design
Supposedly the milk is healthier, the baby is happier and it is easier to feed them. But here is the catch: there are more pieces to clean which can be a pain. The two extra pieces (supposedly) require a special little brush too.
Standard Medela Bottles
Dr. Brown's Bottles
So, is it worth it? In a word: Absolutely!
Up until today I had only used the Dr. Brown’s, but this morning the only bottles we had ready in the fridge were the Medela Bottles. (In case you were wondering, both bottles fit on the Medela pump, but the Medela bottle s are a bit too short for the Dr. Brown’s vent to fit into). Rather than use the dirty two bottles, I just used what I had.
In the end it was a much more frustrating experience. The nipple kept collapsing, Mikayla had to fight the milk more, she was gassier and every couple minutes I had to take to readjust the bottle so air could sneak back in. It ended up taking 30-50% longer, and father and child were both fussier.
Now I am sure there are other contraptions out there and other techniques to avoid this suction issue, but based on today’s experience, I will gladly break out the little brush and stick with the anti-suction-special-venting-plastic-tube-thingie that comes with Dr. Brown’s bottles.
You can read more about the bottles here.