New Zealand’s most popular brand Avent and their patented Silicone Airflex Teats have one major design flaw … they are too LONG for newborns (or for my 5-week old boy anyway)! Why is it that all teats are the same size and only vary by the number of holes? It seems prudent to assume that a 3.5kg newborn has a different mouth size than a 1.5 year old.
We recently had to start our newborn with feeding bottles due to my partner's nipples getting really sore from extended breast feeding. So we decided to express and then feed from the bottle. Of course we did an extensive market analysis to identify the "best" system – NOT. The first one we could grab in a mad rush to the supermarket had to do ... as it turns out the one we ended up with is also the most common brand in New Zealand (Avent).
Going by the package description and extensive research available on the company's website the system they developed is just the business for babies and even claims to reduce colic compared to breast feeding. MAGIC I thought … we're on to a winner!
So then we tried it out for the first time and I suddenly realised that the teat seamed inappropriately long compared to my partner’s nipple. As a result when we tried putting it in his mouth he started gagging because the teat touched the back of his mouth. Pulling it out a bit didn't work either as he couldn't "latch on" to the base of the teat. The AVENT teat measures a whopping 35mm from base to tip – so I’ve been trying to find out what the average nipple length was to somehow correlate the two. I've managed to find a paper that told me about the average nipple diameter but no luck on the nipple length. Help anyone?
Why this bugs me is because I usually end up doing the bottle feed (as per the advice of our midwife who said mums should not bottle feed so as not to confuse the baby with bottle and boob). So to my son right now I'm the bad guy with the huge teat!
Anyway, it seems we are not the only ones having some issue with teats gauging by comments on Epinions. Why has this not been addressed then, or if it has why are different size teats not featured on AVENT's website? Surely it wouldn't be that hard to produce a smaller teat for newborns. Having checked other providers I can't say I have seen a satisfying teat that would make it easier to put in my boy's mouth. So it seems that this is not a problem with AVENT but rather a general issue. Maybe we just have a weird baby? If anyone out there has any suggestions – please let me know! In the meantime I will start a "Show me your teats" campaign with providers of bottle feeding equipment …
UPDATE
Thanks to Noemi we now have a translation of the website for an alternative product by "Mollis". Download the Mollis Teats PDF version here.
-Stef
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Hi, I have a 4 month old
Hi,
I have a 4 month old daughter who happens to be difficult when it comes to bottle feeding. I have tried many different teats that is available in the market in my country (Malaysia) but to no avail. Every where I read tells me that when the baby is hungry they'll eventually will suck anyway but not my baby. She'd rather starve herself then drink from the bottle. Which was what she did, to the extend that her stools turn dark green due to hunger. Because of this I have to take 5 months off work to breastfeed. I'm still trying to teach her to drink from bottle and still no luck.
Then I saw the teats that is on the link http://www.mollis.de/flaesdet.htm and was wondering how do i go about purchasing these teats. Who knows maybe I would have better luck with these teats. I live in Malaysia and I couldn't find this brand anywhere in the market.
I really appreciate if you could reply to this and let me know soonest on the arrangements.
Your help is much needed.
Best Regards,
Ilyana
We send a request to the
We send a request to the supplier, but got no answer yet. Honestly, we don't think they'll have an PDF catalogue in English, cause they even don't have one in German at all !
So we translated the web pages and put them into a PDF doc. We sent it to your e-mail address, Stefan.
Be kind and don't see the mistakes ;)
Hope that helps
Cheers
Lars, Noemi & Lea
Is there any way you can
Is there any way you can contact them to see if they have some material available in English that we could post here?
Thanks - Stefan
Maybe these teats might be
Maybe these teats might be an option :
http://www.mollis.de/flaesdet.htm
The page is in German, but maybe the pictures give you an idea of the size.
If you are interested in further infomration or buying them feel free to contact us. We just want to help a stressed father and have honestly no comercial contracts with that company.
Regs
Lars & Noemi