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Comment by UnoriginalGuy | Hacker News Reader

Can I ask a perhaps very ignorant question:

We have a kid on the way, and now that BPA and BPA free are considered estrogen leaking, what are we meant to buy? However it should be noted that the kid is meant to be a girl, so for girls is this a non-concern since obviously estrogen won't be unusual within their bodies.

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Glass. It's expensive and fragile, but good old silicon oxide is as inert as you can ask for.

Extra estrogen in a female baby is absolutely a concern.

I was part of an investigation that dosed nursing rats with BPA and investigated the effect on female offspring. I left for graduate school in polymer chemistry, but you can read the results here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr401027q

It's no blockbuster paper, but the whole of the evidence gathered suggests you shouldn't expose your baby to BPA just because it's female.

There's also a link between post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy (older women taking estrogen after their body ceases production) and breast/uterine cancer.

Glass is not that fragile. We've been using tempered glass bottles (the fancy lifefactory ones with a silicone sleeve) for more than a year and have yet to break one despite many drops onto floor, pavement, etc. Cost is a little higher than plastic, but absolutely down in the noise when looking at total costs of having a kid.

I think we spent ~$150 on bottles, nipples, and tops; Including lids for these bottles to covert them into a sippy cup. There are cheaper tempered glass options available. Glass also doesn't age like plastic--our stuff has many more years of useful life in it.

Estrogen isn't unusual within a man's body, either. An excess or lack of either estrogen or testosterone can have adverse effects in both men and women.

Boobs. Seriously. You'll likely need to freeze some milk, which will end up in plastic bags, but for the most part just breast feed. It's free, it's good for the kid, and it's good for the mom. When your kid is old enough for water bottles get good quality stainless.

Oh, and hey, congrats! Ignore the tales of despair, raising kids owns.

Fwiw, it's not always good for mom.... it's a time sink, can cause painful nipples, prevents her (if she's considerate) from returning to adult activities such as drinking, and if she's unproductive, low self esteem. Natural != best or even good, it's just a particular strategy that nature has provided. Not to say it's bad either (it's obviously worked for millions of years), but its appropriateness depends on their particulars.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/the-ideal-and-the-r...

@jwc, Sorry to harsh your vibes man, just wanted to provide some counterpoint. There's a significant chance you're right in this case.

As for cups... I've never seen them in baby format, but what about ceramics or bamboo? Glass shatters just like ceramic, so glass is not obviously better on the face of it. I guess bamboo can splinter, but the right kind of cup might be hardened enough for it to not be a significant factor.

Good luck!

Disclaimer: Nulliparous dude

People short on time will not find rearing children to be a pleasant diversion. Low self esteem doesn't seem rampant in the mothers around here. Could just be Oakland/Berkeley yuppies though.

I don't get how anyone does it, personally. Never getting more than ~2.5 hours of sleep at a whack, because you have to get up to feed or pump every 3 hours? After three or four days of that I'd be approaching the dangerously-negligent-of-responsibilities-and-poor-decision-making state I hit when I go too long without proper sleep, and would be a liability to all around me.

I guess (some?) women have some sort of temporary hormonal advantage that lets them pull it off. My wife couldn't, and I don't blame her.

I'd guess it's far easier in states with more humane leave policies than the US, where fathers and mothers both can take several months of paid leave. Without both parents home it's damn tough, and approaches impossible if you already have one or more older ones to take care of (so, few or no day naps for the mother).