Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The BEST Bottles for Newborns


In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit during Maxine's first days of life, we discovered her problem with breathing while feeding. She would sometimes forget to breath while she was enjoying a bottle. She doesn't do that anymore but there is something else she has been doing that really frightens me: she will choke on milk and not always clear her throat, which makes her turn a little purple before I get her to realize she's not breathing. I get nervous but I move quickly to lay her down and slap the bottom of her foot, rub it and/or scratch it and this gets her to "wake up" and cry and breath again. She was doing this at every feeding until I found that one of the types of bottles we have doesn't cause her to choke. They are the Playtex VentAire Advanced (wide) with slow flow nipples (pictured above). I am glad I had several different brands of bottles at home so I could do such an "experiment".
Before I came to this conclusion I went out and bought Evenflow slow flow nipples for newborns. I was pretty disappointed in them as one of them (in a pack of 3) would constantly flow when I turned the bottle upside down. That's not slow flow! Geez?!
Today I bought another 3-pack of these good Playtex bottles (about $13) and I am not going to use any of our other bottles until Maxine is a little older and can handle a faster flow. Not only has she stopped choking but also she has less gas because of the vent holes in the bottom of the bottle. These bottles are slightly more complicated then normal bottles but its nothing compared to the peace of mind they give me (and my baby). Another thing is the nipple is more like a real mommy nipple because it has a wide base and a shorter nipple tip.
I wanted to let you soon-to-be new moms know about this. Not all so-called slow flow nipples are built the same. Some are just faulty altogether. So when your newborn baby comes home and you give her a baba, check the flow first and experiment with several different brands to get the right one for your baby instead of registering for or purchasing a whole bunch of the same kind right off the bat.

4 comments:

Prolifegirly said...

yeah I think my neighbor Lina talked about those (her granddaughter used them with her newborn) and she is going to buy them for us. She says they do work really well with preventing gas. those sound perfect for maxine. By the way- i had johns mom Louise look at your blog and she thinks maxine is adorable, especially her middle name lol.

Sarah Jane said...

Haha, cute.

Iris said...

Great to know. I never thought about this. So glad you are ahead. Gonna come back to read more suggestions :) You guru, you. ;)

Mom101 said...

Glad you found something that works for you. I remember being so desperate, having a kid that would take NO bottles that I put a call out to my readers. The next day, my mom showed up with a bag full of like 16 different bottles. (The Adiri ended up working for us - it's just so...um, booblike.)

Thanks so much for the nice comment at my place, lady.