Dr Brown’s bottles, in general, are great!! Each one, however, is slightly different and overall I prefer the Options, even though my baby is not old enough to use valve-less. I have the original (terrible at spills, because the white cap in the shape of a top hat, sort of, doesn’t stop any liquid at all; they have clear bottles, blue tubies, and whitish valves). I have 4oz blue Options (great, easy parts, thumb print on the lid is awesome for popping that sucker off, and the lid also has these bumps that line up with the nipple, where it slows down the leaking of liquids, and keeps the leak in the cap, although given the ease of taking the cap off, it can still get really messy). (Sorry for the run on sentences, I’m a sleep deprived mama!!) I have the 4oz pink Options (similar to the blue, but actually the valve fits very snuggly along with the tubey part into the bottle, so that can be handy when trying to put the bottle together or add formula, while also holding a baby - more stable than any of the other bottles, where the tubey/valve pieces are just loose kind of sitting on top of the bottle; similar cap as the blue, but no thumb print, and harder to get the cap off, especially one handed). Lastly, I have the 8oz Options with plain bottles and with the Dream/Adventure and Animal characters, all with the green valves and tubies, and the similar cap to the blue, except they are clear, thumbprint included! These have been great, and the animal characters are super cute; the ‘dream big’ and ‘adventure awaits’ are cute-meh. The only thing I was disappointed in that set, is that half the bottles had characters, and half were plain. I may be off on the count, because I bought two sets, but I remember being bummed that I paid a premium for cuteness, and didn’t get a full set of cuteness! I do not own, but have used some purple wide bottles that I was loaned while traveling. That was great, so I wouldn’t have to carry a bunch of bottles, but I wouldn’t/didn’t buy them; they’re just too wide for my taste, harder to handle, especially one handed, and I didn’t feel the wide nipple was significantly better for my baby girl. I will address two of the main two complaints I’ve seen about Dr. Brown’s: leaking and too many parts to clean! Leaking, yes, totally a thing, but it does in fact say on the bottle to only fill to X line to avoid leaking! Having said that, it is very hard for my brain to perfectly calculate how much water I need for the formula, where I don’t end up exceeding the volume specified on ghe bottle! I personally don’t think it’s a huge issue. I know it’s going to or probably will, leak, given the liquid in the bottle, and what I do is to keep a cloth or bib under the bottle when she first starts drinking, and after the liquid is down a bit, I just open the bottle up and pull the valve/tubey piece up a bit, and several big drops come flying down the side of the bottle, which I just wipe off with the same bib/cloth. I can immediately get the bottle put back together before my daughter complains too terribly much. Remember, this is only an issue when you’re filling the entire bottle, either 4oz or 8, so at that point the baby is a bit older and can hopefully handle the briefest of pauses without too much of an issue. If my daughter were the type to go full on nuclear melt down, I think I would probably have to be more diligent about staying under the line, and offering more milk, once the bottle’s finished, and a fuller belly is less likely to melt down. Ok, regarding too many parts to clean... there’s what? Two extra parts that other bottles don’t have? Meh. But I will totally recommend getting the Dr Brown’s dishwasher baskets!!! Oh. Dude. Awesome sauce, life-saving, yes. I am very green, sustainable oreinted, so I cringe at how much water I’m consuming running the dishwasher sometimes every day. So not cool. And, I’m also a sole parent, so I gots a lot to take care of, dishwashy basket is a must!! I have 4. : 0 ) I’m not a super fan of washing the nipples in the dishwasher, so I still do those by hand, no biggy. There’s even special baskets for just nipples; someone gave them to me, but no, I no likey since it looks like there’s still a film on the inside. My experience with Dr Brown’s bottles in general, has been awesome! I don’t even remember when I sorta stopped burping my baby (she’s six months now), it just happened organically over time, but when I was burping her (maybe for three months?), she would only have one, maybe two burps. She burps on her own now, but then maybe that’s just her, the point is that there was very little gas! She had a wee bit of reflux as a newborn, but that’s normal I think, what with having an immature gut as a tadpole-baby. I gave her probiotics and kept her upright-ish, and I think the bottles helped. Ultimately, I totally recommend them!! They were recommended to me by my sister, 8 years ago, as my nephew’s salvation, hope they work for you!
