Introduction

When we discovered that my partner was pregnant last December it soon became clear that there would be a lot of things we would need to buy. Neither of us have young children or babies in our families and other than casual contact with friends with kids we were faced with the daunting prospect of being new parents who had absolutely no clue as to what to buy. We knew we needed the essentials; bottles, steriliser, warmer, nappies etc but with a wide range of choices from different brands each of which claiming to offer something better than the competition I spent a long time reading reviews both on dooyoo and amazon to get an idea of what other parents thought and we ended up basing a lot of our decisions purely on what I'd read.

Because my partner takes medication for a health condition we knew that she wouldn't be able to breast feed once our baby was born so we decided that we should invest in nursing bottles that had the best reviews written about them. This ultimately saw us parting with a small fortune on a collection of Dr Brown's bottles as the reviews I had read were overwhelmingly positive and even though they were the most expensive option available to us we ended up buying various sized bottles ready for our new arrival and thought that we were prepared for when the big day arrived...

Dr Brown's Bottles

Unlike other nursing bottles that are simply a teat held onto the body of a bottle by a tight-fitting ring Dr Brown's are different. Fundamentally they're the same on the outside but these from Dr B's have a special air vent which fits inside the bottle itself. According to the manufacturers this is supposed to reduce colic, wind and reflux and should prevent air bubbles from forming in the formula mixture thus cutting down on the need to burp your baby. It's quite a fiddly set up getting all the pieces together truth be told and makes cleaning all the parts a bit of a pain but once you've put a bottle together a couple of times you do get used to it although at 3am it can be a rather tiresome affair if you've got a grizzly baby wanting its milk and you've got to assemble his or her bottle. The more organised parent will already have assembled, sterilised bottles waiting in the fridge or steriliser so I'm not going to be overly critical about the bottle/air vent set up as that's its main and unique selling point that sets it apart from other bottles that are available to buy.

All of the components are well made, the plastic bottles are of excellent quality and separate components come well packaged in blue-detailed cardboard boxes. There are bottle sizes suited to newborns which hold 120ml of milk/formula and larger, 240ml bottles for older babies. As mentioned in my introduction we bought a collection of bottles and when our son was born and once mother and baby were allowed home from the hospital we were all ready for the first feed.

My Experience with the Bottles

I've got mixed opinions about Dr Brown's bottles truth be told and whilst I acknowledge the fact that they do seem to reduce wind and the need for burping baby during the feed and even though my son found the teats easy to suck on there are quite a few let downs with them that have forced us to switch to another brand. Firstly they are fiddly it has to be said, obviously everything needs sterilising to make them baby-safe and it is a bit of a bind trying to assemble the air vent back together before attaching it to the teat, similarly when it comes to washing the components I found them to be awkward to fully clean when removing any milky residue and it became a bit of a compulsion of mine to get them spotless before placing each of the parts into our steriliser. Another niggle comes down to how leaky they are when warmed up in Dr Brown's bottle warmer, this is a well known issue that is well documented on-line so I would strongly recommend any new parents read up about this too as there are tips given to minimise the problem.

The bottles aren't clearly marked either which doesn't help when you're preparing a night time feed as it takes a few squints of the eyes and plenty of holding the bottles up to a light source to correctly identify the correct ml/oz level on the bottle. The main downside though as far the bottles go for me is that they always gave my son hiccups during his feed. I can't say for certain that its because of the air vent system that caused every feed to result in hiccups but since switching to another brand the problem has all but gone now, he does still get the occasional bout of hiccups if he's being particularly "guzzly" but on the whole they have now settled down.

In the bottles favour they do reduce wind though, again I've noticed from switching brands that we have to burp my son a lot more during his feeds with his new Tommee Tippee bottles than we did when using Dr Brown's so it's a case of 'swings and roundabouts' really. I do think the Dr Brown's bottles are good and we have said that once our son has got a bit older and is taking a lot more milk then it's probably going to be a good idea to switch back to them, however because he's still only a newborn at the moment and only having 90-100ml per feed every 3 or 4 hours the Dr Brown's are perhaps a little to advanced for ours and our sons needs so for now the simplicity of his Tommee Tippee bottles make his feeds a lot easier for us at the moment.

All in all I do like the Dr Brown's bottles but there are some niggles with them. They should definitely be better marked on the side and they are quite fiddly to take apart and assemble. My son had hiccups after every feed which I must admit did put me off from using them so overall I wouldn't recommend them for newborns. On the other hand they are well made, feel robust and reliable and do clean well even if they are a bit fiddly so I'm awarding an average 3 stars as my rating as some parents may and indeed, have, found them to be superb. Do bear in mind that they can be quite pricey especially if you buy multiples of them so my advice would be to try one before making the financial commitment of buying them in different sizes.

Thanks for reading my review.