FINALLY!

I am so excited to write my first product review, and it is a darn good product to begin the review process.

After weeks months of struggle with this little thing called the bottle, my baby is finally able to consume his ounces from something other than me!

And it is due to a wonderful item I won on twitter from Coddlelife:

The Coddlelife Polypropylene Bottle.

I am not kidding when I say my baby was literally chewing on Medela, Avent, Playtex Nurser System, etc. nipples. He would chomp, scream, kick, flail, and pretty much expel his way through 45 minutes of bottle feeding with Daddy. Oh, and maybe he would get 2 oz. out of it before Daddy would look at me drained and say, “Please nurse him.”

So what’s so different about the Coddlelife PP that Gabe is able to nurse?

First of all, please understand this has not been a magic fix. Bottle feeding is still messy, and Gabe still sheds some tears while he figures things out in the first two minutes, but he was actually able to drink 5 oz. within 20 minutes. He didn’t spit up much afterward, and he wasn’t an angry ogre when it was over. He still needed some more from me, but he is just a hungry bugger lately. But this bottle is getting the job done well enough that I might actually be able to leave my sweet baby for longer than 2 hours at a time in the future, and here’s the science behind it:

The Coddlelife PP was developed with breastfeeding in mind. The nipple was designed to mimic not only the shape and feel of Momma (it even has little bumps on it), but it is designed to function like Momma—it actually stretches and flattens in baby’s mouth. It is pliable, allowing the baby to truly latch on and flange like he would if it were a real breast. And I think this is the key for Gabe.

The other wonderful thing about this bottle is that it was made for babies with colic and reflux. And if you read my blog at all, you know my little man has a nasty case of the ‘flux. This bottle has a special air venting system meant to keep the extra air in the bottle from getting into baby’s sucks. And that helps alleviate gas by preventing bottle-created gas bubbles. Good for the spit-up-tortured reflux baby.

It's BPA free, too, which is a must when it comes to bottles.

And I am such a skeptic and critic when it comes to bottles. I doubt every little claim of the anti-colic-blah-blah-blah because everything we have tried has NOT worked. Most nipples really do not remind my breastfed baby of my nipple, and he has a hard time getting any food at all. But this one has worked for little one a few times now, and it has given us some much-needed solace in the bottle battle department.

To be fair, I will offer one criticism of this bottle—I wish that when you turned it over, not a single lick of milk would drip out, because for it to be absolutely like a woman, it would have to function in that way. (Please realize the drip is so slow and so minimal, but I have to be critical about something, right?)

And as this bottle becomes more popular—and I am SURE it will—it would be fun for some colors to pick from other than pink. My boy is man enough to eat from a pink bottle, but I am obsessed with green baby items because they work for both lads and ladies.

So all in all, if you are having a hell of a time with bottle feeding, do yourself a favor and order yourself this bottle. It has gotten quite a bit of acclaim lately (featured in Parents magazine and on the Toy Man Product Guide 2009). Get this for your baby, because quite literally, it sucks.

Thank you, Coddlelife!!

Available online and at Sears