bottles with BPA

i continue with my questions about bottles. i'm now hearing all this fuss about BPA being in most plastic bottles. i'm expecting my twins in about 10 weeks and have already stocked up on soothie bottles, and will be strictly bottle-feeding. now what the heck am i supposed to do? i've heard that bornfree have bpa-free bottles, but went to their site and found that 8 bottles cost $77!! i cant afford that. i dont want to use glass bottles either. i also just saw the post about dr brown's coming out with bpa-free bottles on 5/1. what are you all doing about this? do you think more companies will be going bpa-free so that it will become affordable by the time my girls are here, or is this whole process going to take a while? should i really be worried about using bpa bottles in the meantime? i dont know enough about all of this to make a good decision. any advice is appreciated. thanks,
amy

one more question that i piggybacked onto my post about bottle warmers/sterilizers but didnt get much response to it so i'll post again.
some moms said that they make a pitcher of formula at the beginning of the day and use that throughout the day. how long is it safe to keep a pitcher of formula at room temp or how quickly does it need to be refrigerated?

 

have you looked in to glass bottles? Here is a selection of BPA-free bottles on Amazon.

 

My girls are done with bottles and I had no clue about the BPA issue. We used Dr. Brown bottles the whole time.

We boiled water and put it in a emptied out 1 gallon water jug after the water cooled to room temp. We just used the water at room temp and the girls didn't mind. At night, I would fill all the bottles we would need with water and then scoop formula in them when we needed them. I had a friend who used all bottled water at room temp but I wanted the flouride in the tap water. I had been told we didn't need to boil it but since the girls were preemies I wanted to be safe. We never steralized any bottles. I would just wash them with soap and water and about once a month run them through the dishwasher.

 

I originally wanted to use only BPA free bottles. That didn't work for us at the beginning. However, I will be buying the Dr. Brown's BPA free ones when they come out and will phase out my BPA-laden bottles.

It is also a good idea not to stock up on 1 kind of bottle. You will have to wait and see what will work for your babies! I had Born Free bottles, but they were not working when they first came home - the bottles are so big! We started w/ Dr. Brown's preemie size bottles then switched to Playtex Ventaire.

 

We use Platex Drop-Ins.

I give EBM, but the bottles I mix with formula added to fortify have to be refrigerated right away and are supposed to be discarded after they've been out for an hour. I'm not really strict about that rule though.

 

I just talked with my dr a few days ago during the kids' checkups about BPA. She said in a perfect world, we wouldn't use plastic bottles.....but, it's not a perfect world. The main thing, she said, was to make sure you never heat the bottles in the microwave; that makes it worse. I also heard that canned food (such as formula) also is bad for containing BPA, so I would stick to the powdered formula (if you're not pumping). Also, she said that you are supposed to throw bottles & sippies out after awhile.....but I can't remember how long!

Looking back now, I'm not sure that I would've bought the expensive bottles (didn't know about BPA until just recently!).....we never heated in the microwave, but I probably wouldn't have used the canned formula. My kids are now using just sippies & 'big kid cups', which fortunately gives you more options for BPA-free stuff. I guess if you had to, maybe just buy 2 of the BPA-free bottles.....at least you could use them some of the time.

 

Some of the cheap Gerber bottles are BPA free. They come in lots of sizes. Unfortunately, my boys hated them. I too second the idea of not stocking up on one kind. I own at least one of everything (except DR. Browns...too many parts for me). My boys were very picky at the beginning and actually would drink out of different types of bottles. Jake loved the Soothies b/c that was the paci he used. Ryan loves the Advent, but now also likes the cheap Playtex ones we got free from the multiples promotion they have. DH said last night (after learning that Canada was banning BPA bottles) that we could buy new ones if I was worried. I'm concerned, but we really can't afford to buy 20 new bottles. I'm going to work on transitioning them to sippy cups earlier than I planned.

As far as bottle warmers, I used mine twice. If you are using powdered formula, just premake bottles with the water in it and it just takes a second to dump in the powder. Going from room temp formula to refrigerated formula was an easy transition for us. They didn't care! Now I don't even have to heat up their refrigerated veggies! Makes life easy. Don't waste your money on a bottle warmer...IMHO.

 

We're trying to ignore the BPA issue. We use Dr. Brown's bottles - but we can't afford to replace our entire stock of them with the BPA-free. It's always going to be something, and this just isn't a battle we can win right now.

Formula can stay at room temp for 2 hours, refrigerated for 24 hours.

We mix up a pitcher (2, actually, they're on different formulas), feed from it right away, and pop the rest right into the fridge. Then we just pour out what we need as we need it, and warm the bottle in a plastic cup (or old formula can) of hot tap water. We've tried doing the pre-measured water/just add the powder routine, but my kids don't eat "even" amounts, so we were wasting a lot of formula that way.

 

Useful blog post I found:

http://www.mommyauctions.com/blog/2007/10/...-bpa-free-hype/

The least expensive BPA-free option is honestly the Gerber ClearView, which you can buy for less than $1.50 per bottle in some places. If your baby doesn't like the nipple, try switching it out with other brands' nipples...many are interchangeable. For people who like Avent bottles, Gerber Gentle Flow is BPA-free and takes Avent nipples.

Happy bottle hunting!

 

I found out about the BPA issue when they were a couple of months old. DD was using avent bottles and DS was using Dr. Browns. After help from everyone on here, I found Gerber clearview fits Dr. Browns nipples and Gerber gentle flow fits avent nipples. We have been using them ever since. There are plenty of less expensive bottles available. This website list all of them. It is very helpful http://zrecs.blogspot.com/2008/02/z-report...e-products.html

 

Gerber Clearview bottles are BPA free and very inexpensive. You can probably buy them in your local grocery store or Walgreens. They work with Dr. Browns nipples so the switch is easy from that brand. I don't know anything about Soothie bottles, but you could buy a Gerber bottle and see if the nipples will fit. (the Gerber Clearview nipples were awful)

 

Just today I went to Walmart and bought their brand of BPA free bottles. They're called Parent's Choice. A 3 pack is only $2.97. They come with slow-flow nipples and a 6 pack of fast flow nipples are $3.97. I just used them for our 11:30 feeding and so far so good. They did not have any issues. We used the fast flow nipples and thought there might be a problem since they are only 3 1/2 months old, but they were fine.

Evenflo also has BPA free bottles. A 3 pack at BRU is $2.99. Also I read about Nuby brand. Those are also sold at BRU for $7.97 for a 3 pack.

At first I was using the Playtex Ventaire and hated all the parts. We then switched to Avent and was using them up until yesterday. I decided to change after seeing the report on the Walmart stores in Canada removing all the bpa bottles from their shelves.


I got 12-9oz Parent's Choice bottles for the same cost as 3-9oz Avent bottles.

I would also suggest when you buy the bottles, only open one pack to see if the like them. If they don't you can return the rest and you're only wasting $3.

 

We are using the Born Free (but they are kind of heavy) 5oz bottles as well as Adiri BPA-free bottles. They are rather pricey unfortunately. I'm also going to look into Think Baby and a few other BPA-free bottles.

There's a lot of info on BPA-free products The Soft Landing Blog.

 

Wal-Mart has BPA free bottles, 3 for $2.97. You just can't beat that! They are Parent's Choice brand.