Giving your baby a bottle

Giving a breastfed baby a bottle ranges from very simple to genuinely difficult, and which one you get is mostly down to your baby.

The usual recommendation is to wait three to four weeks after birth, so your baby is proficient at the breast first. After that, some parents find one bottle a day helps in two directions: it gives you a break, and it gives your partner a turn at feeding.

Worth knowing in advance: around three months is when this gets hardest. Babies become more particular about everything, including how they’re fed. Some abruptly refuse a bottle they’d been taking happily for weeks. Others go the other way and stage a nursing strike, wanting only the bottle. Neither is something you did.

Temperature

Breastfed babies are used to milk at body temperature, so you may need to warm a bottle a little more than you’d expect — carefully.

• Never microwave breast milk. The fat globules create hot spots.
• Stand the bottle in a cup of very hot water — easiest method by far. If your tap isn’t hot enough, heat the water in the microwave in 30-second bursts, then put the bottle in it.
• To check: drip a little on your inner forearm. If you can’t feel it, the temperature is right. For a particular baby, aim for just warm on your forearm — never hot.

Nipples and bottles

A bottle nipple will never feel like you, so expect to try a few before you find the one your baby prefers. Some like a wider, breast-shaped nipple — Tommee Tippee, for instance. Others prefer a narrower one like Dr. Brown’s.

All nipples are silicone and BPA-free now. The bottle itself can be plastic or glass, whichever you prefer. There are conflicting studies about the best bottle type for breast milk, and honestly it comes down to what’s most convenient for your family.

Getting your baby to take it

Once you’ve settled on nipple, bottle and temperature, the rest is circumstance — and there are a lot of levers.

• Have someone other than the lactating parent offer it. It often works better. Lay an item of your clothing on their chest so the smell is familiar.
• Offer it before he’s very hungry — a patient baby is a more willing one. Sleepy works too.
• Try turning him toward the chest, as if nursing.
• If that fails, try turning him away from the chest instead.
• Nurse for about five minutes first to take the edge off, then offer the bottle.

Work through them rather than repeating one. Most babies respond to something on this list — it’s rarely the same something twice.

Paced bottle feeding

How you give the bottle matters as much as whether he takes it. Paced feeding slows the flow to something closer to the breast, which prevents a preference for fast milk and keeps going back and forth easy.

• Sit him upright rather than lying down.
• Use the slowest-flow nipple you can find. Most babies do fine with a size 1 (newborn); some brands make a size 0, a preemie flow.
• Hold the bottle parallel to the floor, tilted just enough to fill the nipple with milk.
• If he’s going too fast, tip the bottle down or take it out for a moment.
• Aim for a feed about as long as nursing takes — 15 to 20 minutes, though many babies nurse longer.

Watch: How to paced bottle feed

If you’re running out of time

If you’ve been trying and you’re now going back to work with daycare starting Monday, a couple of other routes are worth knowing.

• Some babies will take milk from a sippy cup.
• An open cup rested gently on his lower lip, letting him lap the milk, works for others. We walk through cup feeding here.

And occasionally a baby will simply reverse his day: nursing more at night and eating less at daycare. Not ideal — and it may mean some co-sleeping, if that works for you, so that you actually get enough sleep.

Most babies do take the bottle eventually, through one or more of these. Often it’s mostly time and patience. And a compassionate daycare provider helps enormously — they have done this many times.
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