BPA free bottles

BPA is short for biphenyl A, a common organic compound used in products like plastic, polycarbonate, CDs etc. Low doses of BPA can mimic hormones (estrogen) in our body, interacts with the estrogen receptor and produce estrogen-like effects on the development of the brain, male and female reproductive organs, and breasts, causing a variety of disorders, including: overgrowth of the vaginal lining, premature breast development, feminization of male offspring, and infertility. As such, BPA in baby’s milk bottle has been a raising concern.

Being kiasu parents, we went on a shopping spree for BPA free bottles. Since I’ve invested in the latest Avent Isis breast pumps, we also looked for bottles that can fit the pumps. Both of us were quite sceptical about the BPA free plastic bottles as they come in all sorts of neon colours. Plastics will always be plastics. If they do not leach BPA, they will be leaching something else. So we went to look for wide neck glass bottles and only Pigeon has them. After weeks of shopping, we finally got the following: MAM, Nuby, B-free and Pigeon glass. All these bottles are wide neck but only Nuby fits the pumps. We tried all the new bottles and teats to feed our baby and being a fussy and difficult feeder, she is only accustomed to Avent’s teats. As such, we started to mix and match bottle caps, and teats. It was an uphill task as even though the Avent teats can fit into the other bottle caps, they do not perform as well as they did using Avent bottles. Maybe due to the technical design, some of the bottles had a vacuum during feeding and milk was unable to flow out. Others were leaking at the sides as the teats did not seal well with the bottles. After some modification by trimming the Avent teats, we were finally able to use them on the MAM and Pigeon bottles. As for the Nuby bottles, I used them to store my expressed breast milk, using Avent’s rubber cover on the Nuby’s cap.

Finally, our hurdle with BPA is over and Baby Anais can feed with her usual Avent teats with brightly coloured bottles leaching everything but BPA... sigh.