3 Mommies
The battle of the BPA-free baby bottles

Note: If you don’t have the time to read this post on my experiences with the different types of BPA-free bottles, and are only interested in a summary of how different bottles compare, just skip ahead to the table at the bottom of this page.

With all the hoopla over Bisphenol A (BPA) in clear plastics, the choices that a new mother has to make are daunting.  Despite the fact that the BPA scare has been around for a while now, most baby products still contain BPA.  Even if you manage to find a BPA-free bottle that your baby likes, the fact remains that infant formula cans are lined with a BPA-containing plastic.  Gerber baby food comes in clear BPAlicious plastic  containers.  Even the glass jars of baby food are not entirely safe - the lid liner contains BPA.

What’s a mother to do?   The first thing is, don’t stress out!  The studies that have been done on BPA are not terribly conclusive.  Generations of kids have been raised on BPA plastics and they seem to be doing just fine.   But, to be safe, I would recommend eliminating BPA wherever it is possible and convenient to do so.

Replacing a full supply of baby bottles is expensive.  It may also be completely unnecessary, since BPA has only been shown to leach from plastics washed with harsh detergents or containing high-temperature liquids.  But if you’re in the market for new bottles anyway, why not go with the safer alternative?

My own bottle selection has been rather difficult.  I did not introduce a bottle to baby Ike until he was 4 months old and and about to start daycare.  My oldest son had no problem switching between breast and bottle, so I was not worried.  Of course, Ike is nothing like his brother, and refused the bottle.  At this point, my concern was not with BPA - it was with getting Ike to drink from any bottle.  I tried 5 different kinds, each one supposedly more “breastlike” than the other.  I didn’t try the ultimate in “breastlike” bottles - the Adiri nurser.  Aside from the fact that they’re very expensive, they completely weird me out.  Here’s what it looks like:

Yup, it’s like a long skinny boob!  I tried different feeding techniques instead, such as feeding Ike when he wasn’t very hungry and positioning him sitting up in my lap facing away from me.   I got Ike to take the Nuk bottle this way, so I was pretty happy.

At this point, I had two choices - either buy a full supply of Nuk bottles or find a BPA free bottle that is so similar to Nuk that Ike wouldn’t know the difference.  This isn’t an easy task, because the Nuk bottles have a very distinct nipple.   Luck was on my side though, as the first place I tried (Right Start store) had a bottle that had just as wide of a nipple.  It was the Mam Care Anti-Colic bottle, pictured below:

I bought one Mam bottle to try, and Ike liked it!  I was very excited and bought a 15 bottle supply.  After a few days, I started noticing a problem.  Each Mam bottle consists of 6 pieces - the cover, the nipple, the ring, the bottle body, the bottom, and the rubber ring that snaps into the bottom.   Coupled with the fact that the bottles are rather wide, all these bottle parts took up a lot of room in my dishwasher and it took a long time to get it all loaded.  Sometimes I had to handwash the bottles, and that took way longer.

When Ike turned 6 months, I wondered if he had enough time to get used to taking a bottle and would be open to trying something else.  By this time I had thrown away all the bottles that we tried months ago.  So I went to Babies R Us and bought a set of 3 simple Evenflow glass bottles.  At $5 for 3 bottles, it was worth a try.   And it worked like a charm!

However, before I had a chance to go back to buy more glass bottles, I found out that his daycare has a “no glass bottles” policy.  Bummer!

But I was undeterred!  I had seen the light at the end of the bottle washing tunnel!  And it told me to go back to Babies R Us.   What I saw at Babies R Us this time had me REALLY excited.   It was a set of 11oz BPA-free Nuby bottles.  What is remarkable about these bottles, aside from the fact that they are BPA free and really cute, is that they are 11oz bottles.

Why should this matter?  If your baby doesn’t drink 8oz of formula at a sitting, no reason.  But if your baby has a big appetite, as mine does, you know that with 8 or 9oz bottles, after you pour 8oz of water into the bottle, there’s no room to add 4 scoups of formula!!!   So really, these Nuby bottles solve 3 problems all at once - the BPA problem, the washing problem, and the mixing problem!  I’m a happy mommy now.

So, here’s the breakdown of the pros and cons of each of the 3 BPA-free bottles that I have experience with.  I hope this helps someone!

Type of bottle	Capacity	Reduces gassiness	Number of pieces	Ease of washing	Appearance	Notes
Mam Colic-free	9oz	Excellent - air vent at the bottom	6	Pain in the rear	Nice looking - wide body, thick plastic	Difficult to warm up using a bottle warmer due to thick plastic
Evenflow glass bottle	8oz	No	4	Great!	Meh	Some daycares don’t allow glass bottles
Nuby	11oz	anti-colic air release in the nipple	4	Great!	Very cute!	Great for mixing 8oz of water and formula right in the bottle!

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