Dr. Browns Natural Flow Newborn Set

We have been using these Dr. Brown's bottles for a year now and are really pleased with them. Our nanny or my husband uses them to give breast milk to our son when I am at work during the day. We tried both these and the Breastflow bottles when my son was about 5 weeks old, and although he was (after some encouragement) willing to take both types of bottle, we found these simpler to use. (To give one example, we kept having to remove the milk that was getting stuck between the two nipples on the Breastflow bottles, but there's no problem like this with the Dr. Brown's.) We also thought that the venting system was really helpful in reducing the amount of air baby gulped in when bottle feeding - we had fewer problems with gas pain and didn't need to burp him too often with these bottles. (Obviously, this is less of an issue now that the little guy is a year old, but it was really helpful when he used to get so upset about needing to burp.) Though these require a different latch/sucking action than breastfeeding does, we have never had any 'nipple confusion' problems. All babies are different, though, so you may want to try a couple of different types of bottle to see what works for your baby. One other advantage of these bottles (or of ANY standard, non-wide-neck bottles) is that the neck of the bottles is the exact same size as the bottles that come with Medela and Spectra pumps, so you can pump right into these bottles and save yourself from having to clean the pump bottles. (These bottles are taller than the Medela pump bottles, though, and too tall to fit in the bottle cooler that comes with the Medela pumps, so if this would be a problem for you, you either need to stick with using the pump bottles or find a taller cooler.) Here are my attempts to clear up a couple of issues raised in other reviews: 1) A few reviewers here mentioned problems with leaks, and at least in some cases, I am sure the problem is that they aren't using the included travel disks. When you are toting the bottles around, you need to put the travel discs under the nipples to ensure the bottles are sealed and won't leak in transit - simply putting the cap over the nipple does not seal the bottles! Refer to the owner's leaflet that came with the bottles, as it has a very simple diagram showing you how to use the travel disks. You must remove disks before feeding baby, though, as they really do completely seal the bottles off. When you are using the bottle for feeding, make sure you have pulled the nipple firmly into the collar of the bottle and twisted the collar firmly onto the bottle and you shouldn't have any problems with leaking in that case either. The ONE problem we had with leaking in the past year of regular use of these bottles was when a nipple got warped - you could see the slight wave in what should be the flat base of the nipple. Unfortunately, our sitter didn't notice this until she went to retrieve the bottle from the bottle warmer and saw that over an ounce of milk had oozed out of the bottle as it was heating. :-( Once we replaced that nipple, we never had another leak problem. This has only happened with one bottle nipple in over a year of using our Dr. Brown's bottles regularly, so I am very happy with how these bottles have held up. 2) It is true that this set doesn't include a bottle brush, but it DOES include a smaller brush (or maybe 2 smaller brushes - I can't remember now) that is perfectly sized to clean the little vent parts that go inside the bottle, and which is also handy for scrubbing out the nipple. Many have mentioned that it's a bit of work to clean all the parts of these bottles, and it's true that the extra little parts make for some extra work. On the upside, the parts are well-engineered to make it easy to get to all the crevices with the included brush. Also, even if you have to wash the bottles by hand, I think it's worth the work to prevent a gassy, fussy baby! But if you really don't want to bother, just buy a couple of the dishwasher baskets: Dr. Brown's Standard Dishwashing Basket, Polypropylene and put all the parts in them! All the parts, including travel disks, nipples, vent parts, etc., (except the bottles themselves, which can go into the dishwasher on their own) fit perfectly into these baskets. We bought three of these baskets when we bought more bottles early on, and it has definitely been worth this small expenditure when we consider all the cleaning time we have saved in the past year. Pro tip: if you have a fast letdown, like I do, you might want to try using the faster-flow level 2 nipples instead of the newborn ones that come with these bottles. At the recommendation of our lactation consultant, we switched to these almost immediately, and our baby liked these bottles better with the level 2 nipples. We still use them now - never saw a need to switch to even faster-flow nipples. (If you don't have a fast letdown, your newborn may feel like he's drowning with faster flow nipples, so you will have to determine which works best for your baby.) All in all, these bottles are easy to use and help prevent gas and stomach pain in your newborn. They are also pretty easy to clean, especially if you buy a few dishwasher baskets. I highly recommend them.