NHS (2019a) How to make up baby formula, Available at https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/breastfeeding-and-bottle-feeding/bottle-feeding/making-up-baby-formula/ [Accessed 3 December 2021] Likewise, there are one or two anti-reflux bottles. This is quite a worrying claim. Reflux is a medical problem, and no bottle would ever be able to make it better. Also, the word "natural" used to describe a bottle might suggest that some bottles are less good, or unnatural, which is simply untrue. Any parent who bottle-fed their baby will tell you that not every bottle is the same. Even the size of the bottle can help – or hinder – your baby accepting it for feeding. We always start by getting product recommendations from the Mumsnet forums. These products have been tried and tested at home by parents in a variety of real life situations and, with over 7 million users, we know this is the best place to go to find out which bottles offer the best value for money. Keep an eye on the teat to make sure it’s always full of milk, not air (this helps prevent swallowing too much air, which can lead to reflux or colic). If the pressure in the bottle builds up so the teat goes flat, the NHS recommends inserting a little finger gently in the corner of your baby’s mouth to release it.

If you’re planning to breastfeed it isn't necessary to buy bottles ‘just in case’. Over 90% of maternity units in the UK are now Baby Friendly Accredited, which means a midwife on the infant feeding team should be able to support you if you do have any difficulties with breastfeeding straight after birth (UNICEF 2017). They’ll help you with hand-expressing your colostrum and feeding it to your baby using a spoon, syringe or feeding cup (Unicef 2017). Find out whether your maternity unit is accredited here. Size: Bottles almost always come in more than one size. While the smallest size might look most appropriate for a newborn, it’s actually the teat flow that matters most. We’d recommend buying the next bottle size up because your baby will be drinking more milk before you know it, and you don’t want to have to replace the bottles too soon. Plus, it’s important to be sure that your baby is feeding till they’re properly full. Volume markings: Are they clear and easy to read? This will become much more important at 4am – trust us.Bottle use is so subjective that what works with one baby might not work with another, so our tester Katrĩna, a mum of two, spent several weeks washing bottles repeatedly, filling them, sterilising them, and testing their solidity and safety. BabyCentre parents would tend to agree. Most said they try a lot of brands and bottles before finding the one that works for them. Most lactation experts recommend six bottles in rotation for daily full-time feeding. However, if you’re combination feeding or just occasionally expressing, you’ll be able to get away with two to four, depending on how often you use them. If you plan to use bottles occasionally, or once a day, then it might make sense to buy just one bottle and teat.

Feeding your baby is such a personal and emotional business that making sense of the vast range of baby bottle designs and functionalities can seem impossible, whether that's anti-colic bottles to help with colic and reflux or teats that aim to mimic breastfeeding - finding the best baby bottles for your child is hard. For example, you'll want to consider: Hurley, K. M., Cross, M. B., & Hughes, S. O. (2011). A systematic review of responsive feeding and child obesity in high-income countries. The Journal of nutrition, 141(3), 495–501. https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.110.130047 [Accessed 6 December 2021] Many bottle manufacturers claim their designs help reduce colic – an uncomfortable condition not fully understood by doctors that could be down to trapped wind, indigestion or physical difficulties with feeding.You might find attending one of our NCT New Baby groups helpful as they give you the opportunity to explore different approaches to important parenting issues with a qualified group leader and other new parents in your area. According, again, to the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative, “offering the bottle in response to feeding cues, gently inviting the baby to take the teat, pacing the feeds and avoiding forcing the baby to finish the feed can all help to make the experience as acceptable and stress-free for the baby as possible.” The second entry in our list for the NUK First Choice+ range but this does have a very specific USP: latex teats. Some advantages of using these bottles are that they can be easy to fill and clean. On the other hand, they can take more space in a steriliser so you probably won’t be able to clean as many bottles at once (Which? 2019). Ready-to-feed bottles If you’re exclusively breastfeeding but want to introduce a bottle once a day, you may be finding it hard to find a teat that your baby will accept. You may have also heard from other mums that MAM bottles are particularly good in this scenario and according to our experience, they aren’t wrong – all of our baby testers readily accepted the slow-flow teats and fed easily and comfortably.

With cute animals on the bottles and a great price, Nuk's First Choice+ bottles come with a surprising amount of clever features and come highly recommended by Mumsnetters. Almost all bottles on the market include anti-colic features. One of the potential causes of colic and reflux is swallowing too much air during feeds, so bottle designers include venting systems to reduce the amount of air that gets into the milk as the baby drinks. It’s also recommended that babies stop drinking from bottles with teats by the time they are one year old as drinking through a teat leaves the teeth coated in milk and can lead to tooth decay (NHS Choices, 2015; Oral Health Foundation, 2017). Read more about this here.Ready-to-feed bottles can be a convenient short-term solution if parents have been advised to give their baby formula on medical advice. They’re more expensive and not great for the environment though (NHS, 2018; Unicef, 2019). Herman (2021) How you offer a bottle can be more important than what’s inside, Available at https://www.todaysparent.com/baby/breastfeeding/paced-bottle-feeding/ [Accessed 6 December 2021] She analysed instructions and online resources, and noted down information about materials and safety standards.