Dr Dr Give Me a Bottle! (Dr Brown's Natural Flow Bottle)

Member Name: LoveBubble

Product:	Dr Brown's Natural Flow Bottle
Date:	02/11/05 (3239 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Help Reduce The Chace Of Colic - Don't Leak !

Disadvantages: Price - Not Very Easy To Clean

My second born Max suffered with colic from when I took him home from hospital. He would just constantly cry for hours and by the end of the first week I was looking like a walking zombie.
After reading through one of my magazines I saw an advertisement for Dr Brown's Natural flow bottles. After trying almost everything else I decided to nip down to boots to purchase these and give them a go.

* Colic *
It's that dreaded thing that every parent has nightmares about. About 20% of babies get colic, it generally appears in babies aged between two weeks to two months, but it can also affect babies later on. It doesn't affect girls more than boys and colic can affect perfectly healthy babies.

The symptoms of colic are your baby continuously crying for long periods, espially while taking a feed. Also another symptom is if your baby is lay down that he or she is bringing their legs into their tummy, and are just generally not interested in there feed.

Colic affects both breast and bottle fed babies. There is no medicine at yet that is proven to cure colic, but you can buy over the counter gripe water or colic drops. Women who are breast feeding there babies are advised to look at there diet as certain foods can effect it. Parents that are bottle feeding babies can look at changing the formula milk or have a look at changing the bottle.

*Dr Brown's Natural Flow Bottle*

Cost - At Boots you can get two bottles for around £10.50, which is quite expensive, I bought eight bottles. Mothercare did also stock them but I've just looked on their website and I can not find them. I also have seen a pack of four bottles, in boots, which I think is just under £20 so if you can get them it will obviously work out cheaper for you.

The bottle it self is quite chunkier than a normal bottle, I can fit six bottles into my avent steam steriliser, which I was happy about. You can fit 9 fluid ounces which is just over 240ml into a bottle.

Now the bottle it self it looks quite strange, after unscrewing the teat cap from the bottle you will see a green kind of cap. This in fact is called the vent insert, to this you will see a small blue valve, and this is attached to the insert by pushing into onto the bottom. Covering this valve and pushing into the insert is the anti bubble tube, this looks a bit like a long funnel. The tube also has a heat sensor on the bottom which tells you when the milk is at the correct temperature to give to your baby.
The bottle looks really confusing at first, but it all fits together really easily.

Normally when you feed your baby, you can see air bubbles in the bottle, now these air bubbles then go into your baby's stomach causing him or her to have trapped wind, which in effect can lead to colic. With the doctor browns bottle, this does not happen, the vent in the bottle minimises vacuum which means that these bubbles are not created. The system in the bottle also stops the teat from collapsing in.

Using these bottles will also help reduce the chance of your baby getting a middle ear infection, by having a vent on the bottle; it means that your baby doesn't have to suck too hard. A baby forced to suck hard on a bottle has been known to cause ear infections.

The bottles are supplied with soft silicone teats so they gently in your baby's mouth. They claim to be the softest teat on the market.

*My Opinion*

Well once I had got over the shock of the price and put the bottles to use I was very pleased.
The instructions that come with the bottles are easy to read and use. The bottle just clicks together, and when I have taken a bottle out with me there have been no signs of leakage.

I noticed quite a difference straight away with Max, firstly he would take his milk much more quickly and only stop once if that per bottle. He wasn't crying during his feeds either and all together he was a calmer happier baby.
This didn't happen over night, but after a about a week Max was sleeping a lot better and looking like he was completely over is colic.

Washing the bottles has to be one of the downfalls. They are so fiddly to get undone after a feed as the milk seems to get stuck in the valves. You do get a tiny brush to help you clean them out, but I would recommend that if you are near a sink after your baby has finished their bottle, just to take them apart and give them a rinse as this makes cleaning them much easier.

Max has never had an ear infection, but neither did my other son and he got fed with normal bottles, so I wouldn't be able to comment whether or not it can help with the middle ear infection.

Overall I would recommend these bottles to any parents who have babies suffering from colic. They are very pricey, but are well worth it. If you have got a baby on the way I would ask people to buy them for you as gifts. New teats are the same price as most other bottles, and I'm sure if you had a goods search on the internet you might be able to find somewhere that sells them at a cheaper price.

Thanks for reading
Lou©

Summary: A bit pricey but worth every penny!