Tipping the Bottle
Accompanying the Great Diet Shift of yesterday’s post is the Great Bottle Shift. While the twins ate mostly breast milk, we fed them from the same bottles that Ellie pumped into. This system worked well because the NICU sent us home with several “disposable” nipples that fit Ellie’s pumping bottles; we just unscrewed the lid, popped on a nipple, and had a system that allowed me to cut down on dishes while feeling like a responsible parent. As a bonus, Abbie wasn’t as drawn to these pumping bottles as she was to the special bottles that we used with her and planned to use with the boys.
Of course these pumping bottles couldn’t be as good as our special bottles, the Playtex VentAire Natural-Shape Suckle ‘N Learntertainer 3000. These bottles promise that their unique shape and revolutionary airflow design minimize the amount of air a baby ingests while eating, thus minimizing spit-up, gas, and crankiness, which allows the happy child to play and learn in optimal conditions, and you want to optimize your child’s learning environment, don’t you? Plus the bottles cost about $5 each and they break down into five separate pieces, six if you count the cap, and anything that’s that big of a pain in the butt has to be worth it.
When Ellie stopped pumping into those cheap bottles, I figured it was time to switch to the special bottles; no sense in hindering the twins’ development any more. The first task was to assign bottle colors to each child. The bottles come in green, blue, purple, and a very light shade of red that should in no way be confused with the color pink. I think I left that bottle in the sun in the sun once, causing it to fade from a manlier shade of red. Ian gets the green bottles because “Ian” almost rhymes with “green.” Tory takes the blue bottles because I’ve always assigned the color blue to him, same thing with Ian and that red bottle. The purple bottles belong to Tory because Ian already has two colors.
Next I had to choose a nipple type, slow-flow or fast-flow. The nipples the NICU sent with us seemed to be exactly between the two in speed, so I could have chosen either type. I started with the fast-flow nipples because I figured if they could handle the mid-flow nipples at 36-weeks gestational age, they should be able to handle the fast-flow at 50-weeks gestational age. They took the fast-flow well and seemed to enjoy the lessened need to suck for their nutrition while I enjoyed packing them full of food in 20 minutes or less. After a few days of watching rivers of overflow formula escape the sides of their mouths, I wondered if the fast-flow was a bit too much for them. Plus I could be depriving them of much needed sucking exercise. I tried the slow-flow nipples a couple times, but after seeing how little they ate in five minutes, I stopped wondering if the fast-flow was too much for them, and started wondering how I managed to sit still for 30 minutes for every time I fed Abbie.
Oh yeah, I didn’t have to keep a toddler entertained while I fed her. Fortunately Abbie has mellowed in her quest to commandeer the bottles. She doesn’t try to steal the bottles from their mouths anymore; she just tries grabbing my hands in an attempt to grab my attention. She’s learning to entertain herself though, and I’m learning hands-free ways to entertain her. She needs to wait until I’m done feeding the boys before I can give her my full attention. Also I need to burp the boys after feeding them because those bottles don’t eliminate gas any more than the cheap bottles. Perhaps it would help if the manufacturer added a couple more pieces to the bottle to assemble and clean.
Of course these pumping bottles couldn’t be as good as our special bottles, the Playtex VentAire Natural-Shape Suckle ‘N Learntertainer 3000. These bottles promise that their unique shape and revolutionary airflow design minimize the amount of air a baby ingests while eating, thus minimizing spit-up, gas, and crankiness, which allows the happy child to play and learn in optimal conditions, and you want to optimize your child’s learning environment, don’t you? Plus the bottles cost about $5 each and they break down into five separate pieces, six if you count the cap, and anything that’s that big of a pain in the butt has to be worth it.
When Ellie stopped pumping into those cheap bottles, I figured it was time to switch to the special bottles; no sense in hindering the twins’ development any more. The first task was to assign bottle colors to each child. The bottles come in green, blue, purple, and a very light shade of red that should in no way be confused with the color pink. I think I left that bottle in the sun in the sun once, causing it to fade from a manlier shade of red. Ian gets the green bottles because “Ian” almost rhymes with “green.” Tory takes the blue bottles because I’ve always assigned the color blue to him, same thing with Ian and that red bottle. The purple bottles belong to Tory because Ian already has two colors.
Next I had to choose a nipple type, slow-flow or fast-flow. The nipples the NICU sent with us seemed to be exactly between the two in speed, so I could have chosen either type. I started with the fast-flow nipples because I figured if they could handle the mid-flow nipples at 36-weeks gestational age, they should be able to handle the fast-flow at 50-weeks gestational age. They took the fast-flow well and seemed to enjoy the lessened need to suck for their nutrition while I enjoyed packing them full of food in 20 minutes or less. After a few days of watching rivers of overflow formula escape the sides of their mouths, I wondered if the fast-flow was a bit too much for them. Plus I could be depriving them of much needed sucking exercise. I tried the slow-flow nipples a couple times, but after seeing how little they ate in five minutes, I stopped wondering if the fast-flow was too much for them, and started wondering how I managed to sit still for 30 minutes for every time I fed Abbie.
Oh yeah, I didn’t have to keep a toddler entertained while I fed her. Fortunately Abbie has mellowed in her quest to commandeer the bottles. She doesn’t try to steal the bottles from their mouths anymore; she just tries grabbing my hands in an attempt to grab my attention. She’s learning to entertain herself though, and I’m learning hands-free ways to entertain her. She needs to wait until I’m done feeding the boys before I can give her my full attention. Also I need to burp the boys after feeding them because those bottles don’t eliminate gas any more than the cheap bottles. Perhaps it would help if the manufacturer added a couple more pieces to the bottle to assemble and clean.
posted by Matt at
11:06 PM
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