The skinny on this new bottle is that it is made from soft silicone. By squeezing the bottom of the bottle the product claims to mimic the let down response of breastfeeding and therefore control the milk flow. Available in two sizes – 150ml (£5.99) and 250ml (£6.99) – with slow, medium or fast flow teats, this bottle would see you right through your milk feeding days.
What we love
As bottles go, this is a looker. The design is clean and tasteful and the 5-part system sets the Vital Baby Nurture Airflow silicone feeding bottle apart from others, with the silicone bottle sitting in a hard plastic shoulder.
It’s a refreshing change to hold soft, rather than hard, plastic and it allowed my daughter, Minnie, to get a good grip on the bottle before hurling it around!
Bottle manufacturers make many anti-colic claims that are hard to prove but you can actually see this system working. The anti-colic AirFlow teat allows air to flow back into the bottle. This reduces the build up of a vacuum inside and as a result, your baby doesn’t have to suck hard to reach the milk further down the bottle and doesn’t gulp in air in the process. Minnie is a windy baby and she certainly seemed less uncomfortable after using this bottle.
What to watch out for
With five parts - teat, ring, lid, bottle and shoulder - there are lots of parts to lose and clean. Fitting the soft bottle back into the hard shoulder is fiddly and means that you can’t guarantee that the bottle is sterile. The first time I put the bottle back together the bottle wasn’t tightly in the shoulder and it leaked, drenching poor Minnie. However, the instructions state you need to assemble the shoulder to the base before sterilsing. This means you can ensure it is sterilise and aseembled correctly, so a drenching incident like we had can be avoided.
At 6 months Minnie could just about get a grip on the bottle but for newborns this bottle is very bulky. When she did grip the bottle during a feed, she squeezed so hard that she fired milk into her eye.
At £5.99 for the 150ml bottle, £6.99 for the 250ml version and £3.29 for each pack of two teats, the initial outlay for changing over to these bottles could seem high, depending on your budget.
Who is Vital Baby Nurture Airflow silicone feeding bottle best for?
BPA-aware parents who like innovative products.
A BPA-free bottle that uses a clever design to honour its anti-colic claims. Like many BPA-free bottles, the Vital Baby Nurture Airflow silicone feeding bottle is expensive. It can be fiddly to reassemble, though this certainly isn’t a problem unique to this bottle.
