The Bottles That Were Supposed To Change My Life

Shortly after I brought twin girls home from the hospital I realized something; they were hungry ALL THE TIME!  This was not a big surprise, since I already had a 2 year old son, but feeding two babies at once seemed like a much bigger challenge than I was prepared for.

Enter the Podee Hands-Free Bottle System.  This system was designed for mothers of multiples, and is supposed to make your life much easier by simplifying feedings.  The idea is that the baby sucks on the nipple like a pacifier, and the milk flows up the tube into baby’s mouth.  That way, you don’t need two hands to bottle feed one baby, and you can hold two babies and feed them both at the same time.  Genius!

After doing my research I discovered two important things.  First, your baby needs to be about 3 months old before you try this product.  It is designed to be used while your baby is seated, so before he can sit up the product won’t work right. They also need to have good suction to keep the nipple in, so it might take a little longer than 3 months for a baby to develop that.  Secondly, it didn’t seem to work for everyone.  While some people had huge success with the system, I found other reviews that said the bottle never worked for their babies.

For the first three months I juggled my babies, trying to hold them both and hold both bottles at the same time.  The day they turned three months old I purchased the Podee Bottle System for the low price of $16.95.  It came with two complete bottles.  I was so excited, I wanted them to work so badly.

The first thing I noticed was how many pieces there are.  8 pieces are needed to complete each bottle. Two tiny tubes are used to get the milk from the bottle into baby’s mouth, and they are a pain in the butt to clean.  The Podee people must think so too because they included a small cleaning brush that reached inside the tubes.  While the brush is helpful, it’s still a terribly time consuming task to wash all 8 pieces and put them together.

I gave the girls an extra two weeks to mature their sucking muscles, spent twenty minutes putting the bottles together, stuck the nipple in their mouths and prayed.  I really wanted the bottles to work!  The girls sucked air, but they couldn’t get the milk to flow up the tube.  We tried and tried until the girls were too mad to try anymore.  I went back to regular bottles.  It was awful.  I cried.

I knew that some babies had success with the bottles as they got a little older, so every month I would pull out the 16 pieces to my two Podee bottles, spend 20 minutes putting them together, and try to get the girls to use them.  And every month we got the same results. The girls would suck air, get frustrated, cry, and we would go back to regular bottles.  At 8 months the girls were able to hold their own bottles, so I stopped the Podee nonsense and the plastic pieces were shoved into the back of my cabinet until now.

For the sake of this review I once again pulled out my Podee bottle system and tried them with my now 11 month old twin girls.  They were able to use them and get the milk to flow.  The girls were doing just fine drinking from their Podee bottles until they figured out they could pull out the tubes and spray milk all over my living room.  While I had fun cleaning up their nasty milk mess, I can safely say that I no longer need those stupid bottles and they will be disposed of immediately.

I still think that the Podee bottle system is a good idea, but I was extremely disappointed that they didn’t work for my daughters.  With three small children I could have used a hands-free feeding system that worked and didn’t cause me and the girls extra stress.  What I got was a failed experiment month after month.  I’m not bitter about the $16.95 I spent on the stupid things, because if they had worked it would have been worth it.  I owed it to myself to give them a shot.  I just wish they had worked!

Disclaimer: No free products or money was received to do this review.  Obviously.  Because I don’t consider the Podee people my friends.  Because they didn’t make my life easier.  Because their product didn’t work.  No, I’m not bitter.

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