Introducing a Bottle to a Breastfed Baby
Introducing your breastfed/chestfed baby to a bottle is more than just making up a bottle and giving it to your baby. Just like how your baby learned to latch and feed from you, feeding from a bottle is a skill to be learned.
There are two big topics that we need to consider when introducing a bottle to a baby: feeding the baby AND protecting the milk supply.
When to Introduce a Bottle: Timing depends on your plans and goals. Plan to introduce a bottle between 3-8 weeks old or when feeding at the breast/chest is well established. If you try too early it may disrupt the feeding relationship but too late and the baby may reject the bottle. Give it some time and patience, it may not work on the first try.
How to Choose a Bottle: Bottles advertised as “similar to the breast” are not always the most appropriate bottle for a breastfed baby. What your nipple, areola and breast looks like while a baby is latched look different than at rest. A narrow, tapered nipple will more closely resemble a good latch than a short nipple with wide base which causes the baby to only hang on the end. Use a slow flow nipple rather than a faster flow.
Narrow, tapered nipple with a slow flow
How Much to Put in a Bottle: When first introducing a baby to the bottle, start with small quantities and add more as needed to prevent waste. Most babies eat between 3-6 oz (90-170mL) during a feed for the first 6 months of their life.
How to Feed a Bottle: Use Paced Bottle Feeding. This is a technique the natural pace of feeding at the breast or chest. This technique is used to prevent “nipple confusion” that we now understand better as flow preference. Babies are smarter than we give them credit for, if they learn they don’t need to work as hard feeding in one situation than another they’ll let you know. Through pacing a feed you can help a baby transition back and forth from a bottle to the breast/chest.
Hold your baby in an upright or semi-upright position. Avoid having them lying flat on their back with gravity assisting the flow of milk.
Tickle the baby’s lips with the bottle and wait for a wide open mouth to latch on the bottle. Have them flange their lips out on the bottle like they do on you.
WAIT for a few seconds for the baby to suck on the bottle with no milk in the nipple. This mimics the period before a let-down during breastfeeding and tells them they still need to work for the milk coming out of the bottle.
Keep the nipple halfway full with milk during the feed.
Take breaks and level the bottle to lower or stop the milk flow every few swallows or when you notice large gulps of milk.
Pay attention to the baby feeding and maintain suck-swallow-breath pattern. Bottle feeding should take around the same length of time as breastfeeding, around 15-20 minutes.
How to Protect the Milk Supply: When feeding a baby a bottle, the parent who is breastfeeding or lactating needs to pump at that time in order to tell the body that milk is still needed. Pumping every 2-3 hours during the day while not feeding at the breast/chest is important in maintaining your milk supply.
