Product I love: Dr. Brown's Bottles FTW!

                        For this product-I-love feature, I’d like to talk about the Dr. Brown’s bottles for babies. Prior to giving birth, I was told to use Dr. Brown’s bottles as recommended by other moms. After trying other bottles as well, I found that the Dr. Brown’s bottle was my favorite. Here’s why:

                        When my daughter was barely a month old; she was pretty gassy. She wasn’t exactly colicky, but gassy. And, what is great about these bottles is it eliminates a lot of extra air that may go through so the bottle so your baby is only sucking in milk. When your baby is sucking in too much air, he or she will seemingly be uncomfortable because it causes gassy stomach pains. Other bottles that I used, for example, the Medela bottles that you can pump breast milk right into, allowed way too much air and I was able to see the air bubbles as my daughter was drinking.

                        Another cool thing about the Dr. Brown’s bottles is that you are able to change the flow of the nipple as your baby grows. I'm sure other bottle brands do this too, but for Dr. Brown's there are three different levels: level 1 being the slowest flow, and level 3 being the fastest. Instead of changing the whole bottle, all you have to do is buy the new nipple, which you can find at places like Target for under $5. They also come in multiple different sizes, so however much your child’s milk intake is, you can buy the bottle according to how many ounces it holds.

                        However, here’s the downside: while the Dr. Brown’s bottles are good at eliminating air intake, they tend to be a lot of maintenance when cleaning. They have so many different parts to them, so you always have to take the entire bottle and break the pieces up and clean them one by one. I had to purchase small bottle cleaners in order to get in the little holes of the Dr. Brown bottle parts.  It can get pretty annoying, especially when your baby is eating every 2-3 hours the first few months of life. I had to exclusive breastfeed through the pump, so I was washing bottles all day, every day. Another downside about the Dr. Brown’s bottles, is it does take quite a while for the baby to finish it. I’m assuming due to the restriction of air bubbles, the flow is much slower…so those night time feedings can seem to drag on and on.

                        Did you use Dr. Brown’s bottles for your baby? How did you like it? If not, what types of bottles did you use, and what was your experience?