Note from Hint Mama: Thanks to the folks at Playtex Baby for sponsoring this post via Mom it Forward. I only write sponsored posts about products and services I truly recommend and that I’d be writing a hint about anyway.
About the time my daughter was 3 months old, the slow-flow bottles we had bought shortly after her birth no longer seemed to work right. It would take my daughter forever to finish her breast milk serving.
So my husband and I switched bottle brands and bought new bottles, making a mistake that is common among novice parents: We blamed the bottle, not the nipple.
If we had done the right research, we would have realized that we were still using the newborn slow-flow nipples that came with our initial bottles, and what we actually needed to do to speed up our daughter’s liquid meal was invest in some quicker-flowing nipples. New nipples are a lot cheaper than a whole new set of bottles, so we had unnecessarily wasted money.
In order to help other parents avoid making the same mistake, today’s hint is to blame a bottle’s nipple for any bottle rejection your children may be exhibiting before you blame the bottle itself. In other words, try out a new style of nipple that works with your chosen bottle before you switch bottles.
It turns out one bottle company is making this sort of nipple test easier to do by offering a product worth knowing about. Playtex Baby sells a “Nipple Variety Pack,” which contains four different styles of silicone nipples that each are a perfect fit for the Playtex®VentAire and Playtex® Nurser with Drop-ins® Liners bottles, both designed to reduce colic. Playtex is giving away these products to one lucky Hint Mama winner – details below.
The pack, which is available for different baby age ranges, makes testing out various nipple designs much easier – and cheaper — than having to repeatedly buy different nipples. The four nipples of various sizes and shapes included in the pack: a “NaturalLatch®” nipple designed to be the “most like mother”, a “Breastlike”-shaped nipple designed to “mimic the breast”, a “Fullsized” nipple meant for babies with wider mouths and an “Angled” design for upright feeding.
To be sure, there’s always the chance that a baby may not like any of the nipple styles that work with a given bottle, and you’ll still need to go out and buy a whole new set of bottles. But according to a Playtex Baby test of 350 moms who tried the two bottles mentioned above, 96% of the moms found a nipple their baby liked within the Playtex Nipple Variety Pack, and 97% said they would recommend the variety pack to other moms. In addition, Playtex offers a money back guarantee that babies will find a nipple they love within the pack.
Finally, if you plan on having more than one child, having extra nipples around via a product like the variety pack can make it easier to reuse your first child’s bottles.
What do you think of the nipple variety pack approach? What are your tips for saving money on baby bottles and nipples? Share your thoughts, be sure to visit Playtex on Facebook and enter to win two Playtex Baby Discovery Sets below. Each set includes a Playtex® Nipple Variety Pack, a VentAire® Bottle, a Nurser with Drop-Ins® Liners Bottle and five Drop-Ins® Liners.
This is a sponsored post written by Hint Mama on behalf of Playtex Baby and as part of the Mom It Forward Blogger Network. All opinions expressed are my own. Follow Hint Mama on Facebook and Twitter, and read more about me and my disclosures.
I love the playtex nursers because of the replaceable bottle bags. I feel I have saved a lot from having to buy way fewer bottles.
Can you freeze those bottle bags?
My hint is just keep washing them carefully.
I save money by going online and buying needed baby items.
I lucked out with my kids and my sister who always had kids before me gave us many. Now, they are no longer on bottles so hoping to win for my cousin who just had her first baby
My tip is to buy bootles and nipples on sale online!
My tip is to sleep when the baby sleeps and go with the flow!