Which BPA Free Bottles to Choose for Your Baby

Recently my wife, who has a chemical engineering degree and is a nurse, has been researching the issue of Bisphenol A, or BPA, leaching from baby bottles. There seems to be somewhat of a debate over this issue, but no one argues that BPA is bad for babies. (I'll save the details of the known effects of Bisphenol A for another post).

Bottom line, my wife was concerned enough that she wanted to get rid of all the feeding bottles we had and replace them with BPA free bottles. So back to our second home...Babies R Us...we went.

By the way, prior to this we were using baby bottles made by Gerber (the Nuk brand), Avent, and Playtex (the Vent Aire model). All of them had BPA.

The bottles that we wanted to get were the Born Free glass bottles. Now there are some plastic bottles that say they are BPA free, but we figured we would just stay away from plastic altogether. However, when we saw the price we were shocked...they were $11 EACH! Heck, $11 is what most of the other bottles cost for a 3-pack!

But then of course you start thinking "What price can you put on our baby's health?" Well obviously we all want the best for our babies, but we just had to see if there was a less expensive alternative. Fortunately, we actually found GLASS bottles that were only $4.99 for a 3-pack! The Evenflow glass bottles. Now I do admit there are some things to consider before purchasing these. So here is what our experience has been with them.

The first thing to consider is whether your wife is breastfeeding. If so, I would recommend you do NOT use these. The nipples are the narrow kind, which do not promote switching between bottle and breast. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go ask your wife).

Another thing is that other people seem to indicate that these bottles leak. Ours did too at first, but we realized we weren't tightening the cap enough. We make sure it's really tight and now we don't have the leakage problem.

Finally, even though the bottles claim to have a venting system that reduces gas, it doesn't seem to work that well. Luckily, our baby burps very easily so we just burp her more often during feeding (about every 1.5-2 oz. or so). But if your baby tends to get gas or has a hard time burping, you might want to think twice about using this bottle.

So far, they've worked well for us...and they look sort of "retro cool."

If you've had a different experience with these bottles or have other BPA Free bottle suggestions, please post your comments.