A few weeks ago, my best girl Mandy over at Harper’s Happenings gave me the heads up that Coddlelife was looking for a blogger to write-up a product review. I peeked over their website, saw that their bottles were formulated for colic & within five seconds, tapped out a rather presumptuous email to their marketing folk, offering my services.
Offering? Forget it. More like BEGGING. Because when it’s 11pm & Harrison has been screaming for a week, I’ll do anything for a clue into helping his reflux/colic issues, including perusing companies to whore my blog out. A few days later, a cute brown box appeared on my doorstep with two bottles inside – one of their Borosilicate glass bottles, & one anti-colic Polypropylene bottle, complete with their venting nipple. New pretty things! That both fit beautifully into my microwave sterilizer!
First, we tried the pink anti-colic Polypropylene bottle. (Polypropylene is not an alien life form, it is more than likely what you’re regular bottles are made of, like Avent). Sure, it’s pink. But it’s easy to grasp, lightweight, & the nipple is designed to simulate breast-feeding far more than the average bottle. If your bottles are like Avents, the moment you tip the bottle, milk starts flowing. But with the Coddlelife bottles, he had to work for his food. Since he was never a breastfed baby, Harrison had a wee bit of trouble when he was really tired with the longer nipple (meant to widen the latch & prevent nipple confusion), but I liked that he had to suck on it to get any milk versus it pooling in his mouth.
The ONLY thing I was a wee bit disgruntled about was the ounce markings – far too light for early morning or late night since they’re almost the clear color of the bottle. So folks at Coddlelife, please do us bleary-eyed moms a favor & make those markings more prominent!
Next came the Borosilicate glass bottle. I never really gave much thought to glass bottles, waving them off as far too heavy & granola.
I know a ton of mothers prefer them to the risks of any plastics. & I have to say, I LOVE the glass bottle the best. I couldn’t really tell you why, except I l
ike that it’s longer & slim & because of its weight, Harrison had a hard time flipping it over his head (his favorite game when we eat). The markings were super-clear on this bottle & my favorite part was the wrap that came with it. You know how in Starbucks, they give those cardboard cup-wrapper-thingy’s (I’m so technical) that keep your hand from burning to a crisp? & when it’s super-busy in October because they just c
ame out with the Pumpkin Spice Lattes & you’re #63 in line & OH MY GOD, there are no more cardboard things & you’re doing the coffee dance of switching it back & forth between hands?! The rubber wrap is like that. But for bottles. At first I unwrapped it & was all “what the hell do you need this for?” Oh, yeah. Glass bottles get hot when you heat them. Der.
But hands-down, the best part of the bottles was the nipple technology. (and 13-year-old boys everywhere just ran to my blog in rapt attention) I have had so many mothers recommend Dr. Brown’s bottles because of the venting system. Which is fine & dandy but y’all…Dr. Brown’s has SEVEN PARTS. & if you run your dishwasher often, that may not be such a huge deal but if you hand wash like we do…that is SEVEN parts. With at least eight bottles per day. You do the math. Coddlelife? From what I understand, it has basically the same idea as Dr. Brown’s where air does not mix with fluid. Sucking pulls only fluid while tubing-bits spit air out the back. With only TWO parts. Nipple & bottle, same as the bottles we were using before.
I can’t lie…I fell in love with these, especially the lass with the anti-colic nipple on it (they’re interchangeable). & Harrison’s getting a better grip on the nipple as we continue with them. But honestly, the best part is the change in him – trust me, I am not touting Coddlelife as fixing my son’s reflux. We’re still climbing that uphill battle with oatmeal, new formula, & new meds twice per day, but these bottles are certainly not hurting at all. & unfortunately, since I started using these bottles the same time as the others, it’s hard to say how much impact they’ve had alone. But thank God they’re at least a small part of our ongoing solution.
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p.s. sometimes they do give-aways & deals via tweets
