Which bottle???

[DV2012]

I have been researching bottles for the past month and keep coming back to the same 3 brands. Medela, Tommee Tippee closer to nature and Avent. I have a few questions that if you ladies could help me with I would appreciate it.

I would like to breastfeed and feed baby an expressed bottle once a day. I have looked at the Medela calma teat and this looks really good as baby has to actually suck to get the milk out rather than it just dripping out like other bottles (no nipple confusion).

I have also looked at the tommee tippee closer to nature and avent natural bottles and both look pretty similar to each other. I think I am preferring the avent bottle as I can get it in a glass bottle and it is anti colic. I would like to buy some of these bottles in case breast feeding doesn't work out.

So.. finally my question is do I really need the Medela calma bottle or will one of the other two bottles be okay with breast and bottle feeding, with limiting nipple confusion? and of the TT and avent bottles which do you think is better?

Thank you!

 

[MummyToAmberx]

I cant comment on best to use while BF.

I will say at end of the day it comes down to what baby likes, doesnt matter which you prefer.

Ive always used TT and think very highly of them. Im hoping our 3rd baby will agree with TT too otherwise ill be trying MAM.

 

[tickledpinkkk]

I do not have experience with the brand of bottles that you mentioned, but I did use Playtex Nursers with great success. They were recommended to me by my aunt who had used them together with breastfeeding. I found it to be much less time consuming because you're not constantly washing bottles. You can reuse the same bottle over and over because you put the milk in Playtex Drop-Ins that go in the bottle. I would rinse out the Drop-Ins and get several uses out of them before throwing them away as well. The Drop-Ins help to eliminate air getting into the babies stomach and causing gas. You can also buy a Playtex Embrace breast bump which allows you to pump milk directly into the Drop-Ins. Saves a lot of time and was very convenient.

 

[shelleyzeus]

I didnt like advent bottles.. my baby had horrible colic with these and they leaked.
Tommee tippee ones were alot better than the advent, im going to try the mam bottles this time.

 

[EmzyJA]

I used advent ones for my daughter and they were ok but going for tommee tippee this time. I'm trying to breast feed and express this time round. I'm hoping that if I try both early on that baby will get used to both, I guess we'll see

 

[K123]

I'd definitely recommend Mam bottles. They're easy to use as you can self-sterilise them in the microwave without needing any additional steriliser and were the best for my son's colic

 

[the why bird]

We tried four or five brands and our daughter didn't care which we used (we ended up on expressed bottles all the time, but I'm confident it wasn't nipple confusion in our case). We ended up with tommee tippee since they were the simplest. The more parts they have, the harder to clean and the more likely to leak (and the more likely that sleep deprived mama will miss out some small piece needed for a seal and pour milk all over herself). It was a bonus that most supermarkets stock some tommee tippee stuff so it was easy to get extra nipples.

Avent were fine but do have more parts. I didn't like doc brown much and we had a lot of leaks with breastflow even though they were the most expensive.

 

[mrsrof]

I used tommee tippee first time around and had no problems. I know at least 3 people who have used Avent and told me they leaked all the time.

 

[Dodima1999]

I have Tomee Tippee bottles and ordered the electric pump to go with this too. Good to hear reviews on this. I live in the country so don't have access to large stores but the local pharmacy does stock Tomee Tippee accessories for when I need new teeth and stuff.
Best if luck with your decision.

 

[zigee]

I used the avent glass bottles for my son, went back and forth bw breastfeeding and bottle feeding no problem. I liked how wide the nipple area was behind the nipple, I do think it made it easier going bw bottle and breast forcing my son to flange his lips around the whole silicon nipple base versus just sucking on the nipple.
No colic issues, I do remember keeping him on the newborn version of the nipple for a long time, well past 5 mo if I remember, then we stepped up to stage 1. Never moved past there and my son breast/bottle fed for a year.

 

[AP]

Gotta say, its really down to the baby.

Calma is a good option if you ever do want to use bottles as they dont function the in the same way a normal teat would

Ive found orthodontic teats like MAM or NUK are popular with breastfed babies too - certainly worked for us

 

[Rickles]

I learned the hard way - it's up to your baby, don't bulk buy - just get 1 or 2 until you know your baby will drink from it...

Ours didn't (EVER) but I must have spent over hundred pounds on every bottle, teat, gizmo out there The only upside was not having to wean her from the bottle - she used a sippy cup like a champ from 11/12 months. But I was pretty much stuck BFing for 14months!!!

xx

 

[misspriss]

I tried the Calma and the Avent (the natural, not the original) off your list. I also tried the Playtex Nurser, Lansinoh mOmma, Dr. Browns with preemie nipple, and maybe some others.

The Avent one came out really fast, even with the slow flow nipples. Sow did the Nurser, and the Dr. Browns (even with the preemie nipple!). The mOmma wasn't too fast, but it was faster than the calma. We used the mOmma for 2 days, and he got nipple confusion and wouldn't nurse that weekend (we had to go back to using nipple shields!). We used the calma after that for months with no confusion.

I then switched to the Pura Kiki stainless steel bottle with the slow flow nipples, cheaper and easier to wash than the calma. He had no confusion as an older baby. We are transitioning to straw cup now. I managed to turn his Pura bottle into a straw cup all DIY style - plastic free!

I'm big on natural stuff and used Evenflo and Dr. Brown's glass bottles with the Calma nipples instead of the plastic ones.

 

[babylove x]

The avent naturals come loose and leak easy.. at least the one I had did.. im not a fan of medela just for the sake of liking shorter wide neck bottles.. so im going with tommee tippee.. he will eat out of it if hes hungry so im not worried about him not liking it. I also like that I can get the sensitive tummy ones if he has a sensitice tummy and itll be virtually the same bottle since im bf.

 

[JadeCrusader]

It does depend upon baby, but I vote for Playtex Drop Ins ALL THE WAY! They mimic the type of flow of milk baby would experience while breastfeeding and the nipple is pretty realistic. It seemed to work really well! We breastfed 99% of the time, but when daddy had to babysit (if I was in class or had to go out for some reason and couldn't take her with me) that worked the best. She always knew the difference though and knew that she wasn't with Mommy, but she accepted it because she was hungry. I actually have a set in my shopping cart on Amazon for our next baby because I like them THAT much. My MIL told me that she tried everything under the sun with her five kids and that type (with the drop in liner) is the only kind she could ever get to work well for her and her babies, so as soon as she saw that they were still on the market she grabbed them for us and it's the only kind we ever used and had very little issues.

 

[squirrel.]

I breastfed till 14 months, but knew I was going back to work when my son was 5.5 months. So I started expressing early on and built up a huge stash of milk ready for him to have when I was at work. We started trying to feed him with a bottle at about 6 weeks to no avail. Every attempt after that failed miserably. I don't know why, but he's never really been able to drink from a bottle. He was tongue tied, but we had it snipped at 6 weeks - it took that long to have it diagnosed properly even though it was an 80% posterior tie and I had all sorts of damage because of it - so that shouldn't have caused a problem afterwards. I always suspected he was lip tied too and that that probably affected his latch on a bottle (he certainly never had a great latch breastfeeding in the whole 14 months we did it for). We tried all sorts of different bottles with my son, but none worked. He eventually did take a sippy cup when I went back to work and he had no choice as he was hungry, but it was far from an ideal restart to me working life - worrying constantly that he would be crying in hunger!

We were left with a huge stash of Avent and Medela bottles, as I had bought lots of medela (and calma teats) before he was born to go with my medela breast pump. When that broke I got an avent manual breast pump so got all the bottles to go with that. He ended up taking to none of them :/ hopefully this new little one will so that they can all actually be used!

My suggestion would be to wait and try baby out with a few different kinds, figure out which one works for you both and then buy in a lot more. I wish I would have done that!

 

[jhughes0709]

in my experience it all depended on which one the baby would use. I had a few diff brands and the only bottle either of my boys liked was dr.browns. We used tommee tippee cups tho and born free. I would buy one of each and just see which one the baby prefers before buying a lot.

 

[Rcx]

I bought the whole tommee tipee closer to nature started pack. I'm planning on bfing but expressing and bottle feeding from the start once or twice a day to allow my husband and family members that precious experience too. Hoping baby takes to the bottles lol. X

 

[mrs.humphreys]

I used the tommee tippee for my 2nd son & I loved them, he never suffered with colic, slept better then my other 2 did & even fell asleep from bring lay down awake by himself, slept right through the night from 6wks with no night time feed, whereas with my other 2 I had different bottles, I can't rember the name from my 1st but my 3rd son had the avent & I didn't like them, my mil bought them so I didn't like saying they weren't the 1s I wanted but my son suffered really bad with colic, never slept through the night & barely slept during the day.
My sister in law had a baby in October & she breast fed & used the tommee tippee & she's never had an issue with her son going between the 2. I'm using the tommee tippee this time x

 

[Porcelain]

We started with Dr. Browne's (which is just like Dr. Green's) bottles last time around. They were a nightmare from cleaning to feeding. It made our babies very gassy, which is the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do!
Then we got the Playtex Nurser/ Playtex Drop-Ins. They are wonderful!!! We used them until about 1 year old when we switched to Nuk with an orthopedic nipple.