9 Best Bottles for Breastfed Babies
Breastfed babies don't only take their milk from the breast. While lactation consultants suggest waiting at least three weeks before introducing a bottle, breastfeeding mamas often abide by their own schedules. Finding a bottle that truly mimics the motion, flow, and feeling of the breast is often the hardest part of making the switch. We've put countless bottles to the test — including some 2012 introductions — and narrowed our list down to seven. Check out our picks for the most breast-like bottles on the market, and let us know which one you (or your children) prefer.
Considered to be one of the most breast-like bottles on the market, the Mimijumi Very Hungry ($13) is a one-piece, wide-mouthed bottle with a unique nipple to help simulate the nursing process. The naturally colored nipple features graduated textures to mimic an actual breast. It is also angled to copy a baby's position while nursing.
The Adiri Natural Nurser was one of our readers' favorite bottles for breastfed babies, but it leaked terribly, driving mamas searching for a new bottle.
Now ReliaBrand has introduced the new Adiri NxGen Nurser ($17), an updated and much-improved version of the original that uses a built-in, bottom vent system — no tubes or valves in sight — to create a pure flow of air into the bottle as baby drinks, preventing the nipple from collapsing and minimizing gas and painful bubbles.
Made from food-grade silicon and plastic, the new bottle can be filled from either the top or the bottom, making it a cinch to clean. However, while the new version did not leak nearly as much as the previous version, we did find that it left a bit of milk behind in the warming disk.
Designed to function like a human breast, the wide-bodied The First Years Breastflow Bottle ($7) requires a suction and compression in order to release milk. The dual action makes it tougher than the average bottle but more similar to the actual process of breastfeeding.