The best bottles for colic prevention come equipped with features that remove air bubbles from the baby’s food. It also offers a convenient way to prepare your baby’s food.
Here are three factors to consider when buying the best bottles for colic prevention.
Anti-Colic Measures
Colic refers to the endless crying of babies that can continue for days. It is understood to be caused due to tummy discomfort in babies.
When babies feed, they can gulp air with their suckling action. Air bubbles can also appear in foods when you blend it using a traditional blender or a spoon; or even by shaking the bottle. These air bubbles can cause gas and pain inside a baby’s digestive tract. The pain can become unbearable and make babies cry non-stop. When babies suffer from colic, they are unlikely to feed or sleep properly. It will affect their health and growth.
Burping is recommended post meals to dispel some of the air from inside the babies’ tummies. But this is not always sufficient. Some of the ingested air can remain trapped inside. Burping can also bring back some of the food out that your child had just eaten – causing loss of nutrition.
So, you need to use a bottle that can reduce instances of colic in your baby. See to it that the bottle comes with the following features –
Blender –
The blender inside the bottle helps to mix the food just as you need to feed the baby. It also blends the food in the right consistency that is ideal for babies. If you blend the food in bulk and store it for later use, it can become lumpy and unpalatable. Such food texture can cause indigestion and hence colic in babies.
The blender can also help you mix stored breast milk too. It will turn it into a smoother texture and blend all the layers properly. Breast milk can separate into layers of fats and liquids when stored for a few hours. It then becomes unpleasant for babies. Its taste can change. It also won’t pass through the nipples smoothly. Inconsistent feeding of disagreeable food can cause indigestion in babies; increasing their risk of getting colic.
The blender can blend all kinds of formulas and cereals into a silky texture that is more agreeable for babies.
Air vents –
Air vents help to remove air from inside the food. The blender won’t create excess air bubbles, to begin with, and the rest will be removed by the air vents. The food won’t be completely free from the air bubbles. But the food will be devoid of them significantly to reduce the occurrence of colic in your baby drastically.
The Nipple Design
Pay close attention to the nipple’s design when buying the bottle to prevent colic. The best bottles for colic prevention come with multiple nipple attachments with varying speed settings.
Babies need to feed at their optimal speeds to reduce the intake of air. If an infant feeds from a nipple with a fast speed flow then the chances of colic incidents can increase. Infants need to feed on nipples with slow speed flows. For older babies, you can buy a speed flow as per their age or specific needs. Some older children too tend to feed slowly. So, choose a nipple accordingly.
The nipple’s design must closely match that of a woman’s breast. It will help babies feed using the bottle easily. The sucking action needs to be comfortable for the babies when they use it on a bottle’s nipple. Silicone as the material for the nipples is perfect as it helps babies to latch onto it easily.
The Material
The material of your baby’s bottle must be non-toxic. Traditional baby bottles are generally made using materials that can leech toxins into your baby’s food. For long-term use, such bottles are certainly not ideal.
Anti-colic bottles are an innovation. So, expect such bottles to be made with safer materials. When selecting the bottle, check if it is free from toxic materials such as phthalates, PVC, and BPA. These are chemicals that can cause harm with their long term use.