Best Bottles for Breastfed Baby Who Refuses Bottle

Many mums who breastfeed their baby know how fussy their tot is about accepting formula milk from a bottle. This can be a big issue, as prolonged and frequent breastfeeding can cause Mum’s discomfort and soreness. So, what are the best bottles for breastfed babies who refuse a bottle?

Some key questions on bottles for babies who refuse the bottle include:

• Does it have a more realistic nipple for a breastfed baby who refuses bottle feeding?
• Is it glass, or silicone, or plastic?
• If it is plastic, what about the topical subjects of recycling, reducing plastic waste and the environmental cost?
• Is it really an effective bottle for babies who refuse to move off of breastfeeding?
• Is it designed to reduce accidental air intake during feeding and therefore prevent your baby from getting colic?
• If a fussy baby drops the bottle, will it break (meaning that you need to pay for another)?

Of course, the breast is indeed best up to a point. Most babies enjoy the warmth, smell, and heartbeat of mum and it makes them feel relaxed and secure. It’s a quick way to calm a grumpy tot. Babies are also 100% optimized for breastfeeding and mums milk really has a lot going for it. Plus let’s face it, it’s fewer bottles to wash and less formula milk to buy. You can spend that extra cash on some serious chocolate – right?

However, it’s also a very real strain on some mums – including dry and cracked nipples, constantly feeling hungry as your body soaks up the calories creating more milk, sometimes up to 800 calories a day. OK, you get to eat that supersized ice cream, or that double whopper cheeseburger, without worrying about your waistline but there is more to life than that. Add to that some mums for various reasons will struggle with breastfeeding over longer times, so despite the obvious upsides of breastfeeding, there’s nothing wrong with weaning your baby off of a breast and on to a bottle.

So, let’s take a quick look at our top three best bottles then we’ll go into a bit more detail and add a couple of extra worthy candidates for best bottles for breastfed babies who refuse the bottle.

Top 3 Bottles for Reluctant Breastfeeding Babies

EDITOR’s PICK
1. Olababy Gentle Baby Bottle
Best for Overall Design
Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We like the Ola because of its award-winning offset design which mimics natural breast shapes, the fact that it is designed to be easy to hold and not least because it is silicone and therefore has no nasty plastic-related issues and is, of course, BPA free.
Pros: — The natural shape and feel will appeal to some tots; — Easy to hold; — Easy to wash; — It won’t break if your baby drops it in disgust. Cons: — It is not plastic, but it will still most likely go to landfill.
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2. Bumblebee Silicone Baby Bottle
Best for natural look and feel
Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Another great design in our view. A realistic color, and easy to hold dual-handle design, and clever slightly spongy silicone construction all make this Bumblebee bottle right up the top end of our recommended list. We especially like it’s more realistic nipple for a baby refusing its bottle.
Pros: — Easy to hold; — Squeezy silicone design is more realistic than many; — Slow flow teat design is also more natural. Cons: — Not the cheapest.
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3. Comotomo Natural Feel Baby Bottle
Designed to prevent colic
Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Another best bottle for a breastfed baby who refuses a bottle. It’s naturally shaped, soft to the touch, has semi-realistic silicone nipples, and also special air vents designed to prevent the serious issue of infant colic.
Pros: — Great overall design; — Baby won’t break it; — Vents designed to prevent colic. Cons: — No effort made to make it look as realistic as it feels.
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That’s a quick look at our top 3 solutions for the baby who won’t take a bottle.

Next, we’ll look at some of the buying criteria when you make your choice.

Plastic, Silicone, or Glass? – your environmental choice

Most American mums plan to breastfeed when they first have a baby and they don’t expect to change over and then use formula. However, things are not so clear cut. In fact, the most recent statistics are that in the USA over 70% in practice do end up using some, most or all formula.

That’s a lot of mums needing to buy bottles.

All that said, plastic bottles are not as popular as they were in some households because of environmental concerns.

One key choice for some women when choosing a new bottle is to avoid plastic and go for glass or silicone. The huge amount of non-degradable plastic waste in massive ugly and smelly landfills, or washed up on the world’s beaches and present even down to the microscopic level in the marine environment is a cause for concern for many women. Problems created for the marine animal by broken plastic feeding bottles (or chemical leaching from them) can be related to direct ingestion of plastic waste, or chemicals within plastic bottles that interfere with their hormonal mechanisms.

One especially nasty chemical used in some plastic is BPA (bisphenol A), now banned by the FDA in many products tots come into contact with which can reduce reproduction and stunt growth. Being BPA free is and is a big issue for example in other areas, such as – for some women – in the brand of tampons they buy.

If you go for plastic that’s fine but you might want to get something in recyclable plastic.

So, the next choice is Silicone which isn’t going to break easily either and does not really have some of the poor environmental connotations of non-recyclable kinds of plastic. It’s typically not quite as affordable though and can still end up in the landfill.

Glass is our third option which is great because it is recyclable but on the other hand, you don’t want to drop it – and if you are encouraging your baby to hold the bottle you need a little bit of extra care. Grumpy babies are well known for throwing bottles on the floor in disgust!

Best Nipple for Baby Refusing Bottle

Now here is our full detailed list with pros and cons of 5 popular best bottles for a breastfed baby who refuses their bottle

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1. Olababy Gentle Baby Bottle

Best for Overall Design

The clever offset teat design of this Ola bottle makes it closer (to some babies at least) to their mum’s natural breast shape. Tick once for that. Some babies might not be taken in by that but at least it’s a step in the right direction. The wide design makes the bottle easy to hold for the baby so tick two. Oh, and it’s easy to clean for mum with no special brush. Tick three.

This Olaby model is slightly squishy silicone too, which feels better – at least to some babies – than glass or plastic. That might be a key factor to some tots and is a definite plus as you can plastic – shame other breastfeeding mums you know. Tick four and five. If you or your baby drop it, it won’t break as glass does. So that’s a half-tick.

All in all, a score of five and a half ticked boxes, adds up to lots of reasons for the Olababy to be at the top of our list.

Verdict: A really very practical and sensible choice for getting that moody tot on to formula milk. It’s not quite as virtue signalling as glass but on the other hand, who wants to be sweeping up broken glass?

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2. Bumblebee Silicone Baby Bottle

Best for natural look and feel

The Bumblebee does a good job of getting closer to the look and feel of natural feeding (except of course those handles). It’s a slightly realistic color, and easy to hold and to squeeze (the dual-handle design makes it easier still to hold). We like the slow flow nipple / teat does a good job as does the clever slightly spongy silicone construction. All this makes this little Bumblebee bottle right up the top end of our recommended list.

Verdict: We especially like it’s more realistic feel and nipple design for a baby refusing its bottle.

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3. Comotomo Natural Feel Baby Bottle

Designed to prevent colic

There’s something appealing about the Como Tomo (crazy name). It’s hard to describe but it is some combination of how it is shaped, soft to the touch, has semi-realistic silicone nipples, and also has special air vents.

The silicone wide body design is also a plus – you are trying to get a baby weaned off of a breast, not a hot dog.

Verdict: Another good choice of best bottle for a breastfed baby who refuses a bottle.

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4. Philips Avent Natural Glass Baby Bottle

Best easy to hold glass-made bottle

Did we just mention glass? Here it is. We really like the wider neck design of the Philips Avent which gives the baby an easy grip and is a lot easier when it comes to trying to clean it out later. Generally, these wide bottles seem to go down better with some breastfeeding tots than the long and thin models. After all, they are a bit closer in design to a breast. Philips tell you they are made from borosilicate glass which makes them heat and thermal shock resistant (going from very cold to very hot otr vice versa causes glass to rapidly expand or contract). Note however that they are not ‘being hurled angrily by a disgusted child from it’s high chair’ resistant. Think of Stewie from Family Guy.

The silicone teats are very well designed on the Avent and there is some venting work, which Philips calls “Air Flex” to reduce colic, so plenty of thought has gone into these.

Verdict: Ok it’s glass so obviously not the same as mum but at least Philips have put some real positive features into this product.

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5. Nuk perfect start set

Best set for starting weaning baby off of breastfeeding

This good quality and surprisingly affordable plastic bottle/silicone teat Nuk multi-pack gives a breastfeeding mum a complete kit to get the transition going to formula milk. The kit includes bottles, teats of differing sizes, a bottle cleaning brush and a pacifier. There’s some clever Nuk anti-colic technology ( the aptly named “NUK Anti-Colic Air System”) to help stop your baby getting wind and we like that it has an included pacifier for “in between” feeds. For babies up to 6 months old there’s a really good selection by Nuk of what’s needed. Not the easiest to clean due to the narrow neck – so the cleaning brush makes a lot of sense to us.

Verdict: Nuk have a range of good products in this age range and we really like the thought they have put into this zero to six month package.

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Three Best Bottles for Fussy Breastfed Babies

We hope you have seen a variety of well-designed and practical products that will help you with your baby if they refuse a bottle. You can see the companies here have done their research and put some real thought into their products. Really the choice today is as much about the environmental issues about how the products are made. It’s very much a three -way split between plastic, silicon and glass. Each has pluses and minuses. Glass bottles sound the most ‘eco-friendly’ but there’s still the issue of how these bottles are made and (if you break them) that fact you may have to buy more than a plastic or silicon model that the baby can happily throw on the floor.

EDITOR’s PICK
1. Olababy Gentle Baby Bottle
Best for Overall Design
Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
CHECK PRICE
MORE DETAILS
2. Bumblebee Silicone Baby Bottle
Best for natural look and feel
Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
CHECK PRICE
MORE DETAILS
3. Comotomo Natural Feel Baby Bottle
Designed to prevent colic
Our rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
CHECK PRICE
MORE DETAILS

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Now finally, we believe very strongly that breastfeeding plus bottle feeding is a good combination for American moms for all the reasons we discuss in this article. However, we should close this review by mentioning that The World Health Organization (WHO) are very much in the news at the moment and for them, the current scientific research evidence more or less conclusive that breastfeeding offers more protection than formula milk from certain kinds of ear and chest infections and is linked up to a point to reducing the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Plus of course, it is free. WHO advice is that if possible babies are mainly or exclusively breastfed for the first six months and then breastfed alongside weaning. Now, WHO is world-wide and they very much consider the situation in third world countries where the costs of formula milk, feeding equipment, and facilities for cleaning equipment vary considerably – many still do not even have running water.

So, we are not arguing that the WHO advice is necessarily right for the situation in the USA but do consider mixing breastfeeding in with bottle feeding if you feel it works for you.

Thanks so much for reading. Please let us know any comments.