When it comes to choosing the right baby bottle for your baby, we would make a grave mistake if we don’t do proper research and feed our kids milk and other liquids in compromised material that won’t be good for the baby’s health.
In our other blog, Why you shall have a glass baby bottle instead of a plastic baby bottle, we have discussed the different materials that bottles are made with but in this blog we will discuss other factors that will help in contributing valuable information so that you make the right choice.
When it comes to baby bottles, there are various components in each bottle, such as a glass bottle, a nipple, a screw ring, a sealing disc and a dust cover. Evaluating all these materials would be key in evaluating the baby bottle as a whole product.
So, let's consider the different components of baby bottles one by one.
As mentioned earlier, we have discussed Bottle Material in the previous blog, Why you shall have a glass baby bottle instead of a plastic baby bottle.
To continue the discussion, we will discuss other components of the bottle.
Nipple Materials
Latex Nipples:
Advantages:
Latex is softer and more flexible.
- Latex nipples are inexpensive
Disadvantages:
- Can lead to thinning if used excessively.
- Some babies are allergic to latex.
- Can become discoloured, stuck, cracked and torn.
- They may leach carcinogens called nitrosamines.
Silicone Nipples:
Advantages:
- Last much longer than latex.
- Silicone is firmer than latex.
- Silicon nipples are toxins free.
Bottle Feed
Your baby is most probably transitioning from breastmilk to bottled milk and this transition should be as smooth as possible.
If the bottle is light weight, then it comes easier for you and the baby to hold it. Lightweight bottles also don’t add extra weight to your already stuffed diaper bag.
Too small bottles will lead to babies letting the bottle slip or losing grip of the tiny bottle.
Bottle Flow
As we discussed earlier that the baby is transitioning from breastfeeding to bottle feeding and therefore it becomes extremely important that the baby feels similarities between the breastfeeding experience and the bottle-feeding experience.
These similarities are brought about by the silicone nipples which neither allows the milk to flow freely nor is it too slow, thus, mostly mimicking the mother’s breastfeeding experience.
Bottle Shapes
Even though some people argue that shorter bottles give the baby an experience of their mother’s breast, the volume of milk contained in the little bottle is too less to make the baby full. The baby therefore needs a regular sized bottle that contains enough milk to fill the baby. The discontinuity of refilling a smaller rounder bottle can lead to the baby not drinking the second round of milk at all.
The shape and size of the bottle therefore becomes very important.
Conclusion
As a mother, you want your baby to accept and like the bottle-feeding experience as much as it likes the breastfeeding experience. And therefore, you don’t want to pick the first bottle that comes in front of you. In fact, you want to do thorough research to ensure that the bottle that you are going to feed your baby with is extremely healthy for your child and will not lead to any health-related issues in the future.
