Product Review: Dr. Brown baby bottles

One of the things we registered for on our baby registry was Dr. Brown baby bottles. We chose Dr. Brown baby bottles because a few of my friends said they really liked them and because all the reviews we read online said great things. In particular that their baby bottles helps reduce feeding problems like colic and gas. Now that we’ve been using them for about a month, I wanted to share my thoughts on them.

The ones we have are the 8oz polypropylene bottles – standard not wide and not glass.

The first thing you need to know about Dr. Brown baby bottles is that there are a lot of parts. There are a total of six pieces including the cap.

1. Bottle
2. Vent
3. Vent insert
4. Nipple
5. Ring
6. Cap

Basically, keep this in mind because you need to wash each piece of the baby bottle each time you wash the bottles.

The package comes with a tiny brush to wash the vent (it’s the blue tube in the photo). The brown/yellow vent insert goes on top of the blue vent tube. These two pieces of the baby bottle combine together to help circulate the air out of the baby bottle when your baby is drinking. You’ll need to buy a big brush to wash the actual bottle.

Second, I found that it was better to mix the formula before inserting the vent tube into the bottle because you don’t want baby powder getting stuck into the tube. The package comes with a flat ring disc that you can put into the ring in place of the nipple so you can make the formula. Then when you’re done mixing you take the ring disc out and put the nipple in.

Here are my thoughts on the baby bottle:

1. The multiple pieces proved to be a bit annoying for my husband – he became very tired of washing the pieces.
2. Some of the vent insert pieces started to mold even though we hand-washed them as instructed. I’m not sure if it was from the formula sitting in the fridge or just plain moisture because we made a formula for the day rather than made to feed at that moment.
3. Our baby was still pretty gassy even though we used the bottle. In all fairness though, we couldn’t tell if he was less gassy than he would have been if we hadn’t used the Dr. Brown baby bottles.
4. The bottles are a little pricey at $15.99 for three bottles since we felt they didn’t seem to be as great as we had expected them to be from all the reviews and recommendations from friends.

I want to again disclaimer though that although our experience wasn’t great with the Dr. Brown bottles, many of my friends use them without any issues other than the complaint that there are a lot of pieces. None of my friends had the molding issue we were having with our vent inserts. So, it’s entirely possible we simply weren’t storing them properly when not being used, but we did use the Dr. Brown drying rack that is sold separately.

In addition, I’d say that every baby is different. How they drink, what types of nipples they end up liking, whether they are colicky or gassy – it differs between each and every baby. I’m not telling anyone not to buy them, I’m simply just sharing my experience with them.

Lastly, I want to reiterate that I’m doing this review on my own because I use them. No one has asked me to review them here and Dr. Brown has not endorsed this review in any way.

Photos taken from Babies R Us website.

This post is NOT sponsored. I just like to write reviews for things we’ve tried or used in our home. If a post is sponsored, I’d definitely note it for you in the post. Either way, sponsored or not, my reviews are my honest opinions.