09/09/2025
Bottle TIPS: Do not fall for the marketing. There are a lot of bottles that are designed to look like a breast. They don't work like one. You want to pick your bottle based on the shape or the ni**le. A tapered ni**le like the Pigeon, Lansinoh, Gulicola, or Evenflo Balance, Dr. Brown’s narrow flow promote and optimal latch. Straw like bottles like Como Tomo, Tommee Tippee, Avent and Boon promote a shallow, narrow latch.
2. Offer your first bottle between 3-6 weeks if you have to go back to work. Babies rely on reflexes for the first few months to practice sucking. This reflex integrates and shifts to chewing around 3-4 months. If you need to give a bottle for returning to work, offer it early and keep offering it routinely. The muscles for breast and bottle feeding are different and it can be difficult for older babies to learn the new skill. Offering too close to going back to work can be really stressful for both parents and baby and I see a lot of botte refusals.
3. Offer the slowest ni**le your baby tolerates. Bottle feeding should take 15-20 minutes to take a 2-4oz bottle until baby is 4+ months. It takes 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain it's full. Feeding a baby too fast increases the likelihood baby will be over fed
4. If baby is struggling to take a bottle, get help sooner rather than later reach out!
Thanks to rhe Speech Pathologist who shared this
