Best Baby Bottles

Baby bottles are a necessity for all babies, even if you're breastfeeding you'll still want to use bottles for giving water to the baby.  You'll also want them for times that you're not around or just to let dad share in the baby feeding experience.  But there are so many different bottles and sizes and nipples to choose from, what do you do?

There are basically two bottle sizes to choose from: 4 oz and 8 oz.  The 4 oz bottles are for newborns and you will use those for the first couple of months.  Then, as baby's appetite grows, switch to 8 oz bottles, which you'll use for the first year or so until you switch to sippy cups. How many bottles do you need?  I would get three to six 4 oz bottles and six 8 oz bottles.

Which baby bottles do I like?  For most babies, the  Evenflo Classic Glass Bottle will work fine.  They are cheap and easy to clean, which means they won't smell like sour milk.  Some people worry about the bottle breaking, but that is very unlikely as it is very thick glass.  You could also buy these bottles with the silicone sleeve on them.  They are safe and look cool and would make a nice gift, but they are also more expensive.

We started with the basic glass bottles, but our daughter spit up constantly (more so than the average baby) so we tried out a few different bottles to see what worked best to keep that milk in her tummy. We decided on Dr. Brown's bottles. These are designed to prevent air bubbles, thus reducing gas and spit up (for feeding tips check this out.)  They didn't eliminate her spitting up but they greatly reduced it and made us much happier as a result.  The bottles have a few more parts to it, making clean-up a little more effort but are dishwasher safe.

What's the deal with the nipple types?  Basically, the nipples control how fast the milk flows to the baby.  So for newborns, you want slow flow or level 1 nipples.  After a couple of months, you'll switch to medium flow or level 2.  Then around six months or so, you'll want the the fast flow or level 3.  Make sure you pick up a bottle brush as well.  This one comes with a larger brush for cleaning bottles as well as a smaller brush hidden inside the handle that cleans out the nipples.  It also has a base so it can sit upright on the sink.

So there you have it.  Some information to help make the bottle buying process a little easier