Best bottles for your breastfed baby - IBCLC recommended bottles
IBCLC recommended bottles: what do they look like? Well… to be honest, it’s a bit of a complicated subject, as you’ll see in the following article. To be honest, it’s not so much about a specific brand, as it is how your baby feeds from the bottle.
Giving your breastfed baby a bottle
Reasons why you may wish to give your breastfed baby a bottle
Many breastfeeding parents want to give their baby a bottle. There can be several reasons for this. Perhaps you are:
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Returning to work (or have other circumstances) that mean you will be separated from your baby for long periods of time. This means that you will need your baby to be fed by someone else. With a young baby, this usually means that they will need to be bottlefed. As a personal example, I needed surgery in the weeks after my second baby was born. Therefore I had to make sure that he could take a bottle while I was in hospital and recovering from surgery.
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Having breastfeeding challenges. Some babies may have difficulty latching or feeding directly from the breast. Offering a bottle can be an alternative feeding method. Sometimes breastfeeding is very painful, and mums dread feeding their baby directly. There are usually ways to improve these challenges and giving a bottle may not be the best solution. Working with a lactation consultant may be helpful in resolving these challenges. However, until you can overcome the challenges, your baby still needs to be fed!
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Your baby has slow weight gain. Often, when babies are gaining weight slowly the first intervention that will be suggested is to give them a “top up” with a bottle, either with breastmilk or formula. As a lactation consultant, I’d not usually suggest bottle top ups as the the first step. A thorough feeding assessment would help us understand why your baby isn’t gaining weight well. There are also other things you can try, like switch feeding, breast compressions, cup feeding, or even a supplemental nursing system. These alternatives mean we can avoid giving your baby a bottle. A good breastfeeding plan should include ways to increase your baby’s weight gain without using bottles long term. However, sometimes bottle top ups are the easiest and quickest way to get a bit of extra milk into your baby, at least initially. For most parents there is less of a learning curve than with cup feeding or using a supplemental nursing system.
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Convenience: Some mums don’t feel comfortable breastfeeding in public, or they would like someone else to feed the baby from time to time. This may be especially true at night time, when a lot of mums want their partner to give a bottle so they can get more sleep. Sleep IS important for your wellbeing and mental health, so this might be a situation where giving a bottle is helpful. Just bear in mind that you normally need to breastfeed at least once overnight to maintain your supply. Additionally, going any longer than 4-5 hours overnight without breastfeeding may also have an impact on your milk supply, especially in the first 4 weeks.
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Peace of mind: Having the option to bottlefeed provides peace of mind for parents. That way they know that their baby can be adequately fed even if they are not available to breastfeed. This “just in case” reason is still valid, even if you don’t intend to give your breastfed baby many bottles!
Should a breastfed baby be able to take a bottle?
When is the best time to introduce a bottle to a breastfed baby?
If your baby is under six weeks
You may have read that you shouldn’t give a breastfed baby a bottle before they are six weeks. Explanations for this include: it can confuse their latch, or because you need to breastfeed round the clock to establish a good milk supply. While this is a good rule of thumb, there may be reasons why you want to introduce a bottle sooner and a pragmatic approach is often more practical. Therefore, I would suggest that you can give a bottle sooner than six weeks if you feel that breastfeeding is going well. What does “going well” look like?
1. Feeding is comfortable and baby latches easily.
2. Your baby is gaining weight well.
3. Your baby is feeding at least 8 times in 24 hours.
4. You pump any time baby gets a bottle.
If your baby is over six weeks
You have a bit more flexibility after the first six weeks so you may not need to be so stringent once your baby is older. There is less of a concern if your baby doesn’t breastfeed 8 times in 24 hours or if you don’t pump every time your baby gets a bottle. This is because your supply is usually fairly well established at six weeks. Even if you give a few bottles and your supply drops for a few days, it’s usually pretty easy to get your supply back up.
Will introducing a bottle interfere with breastfeeding?
The short answer is no. That is, providing that you’ve given enough thought to the following issues and you have a contingency plan to address them:
- The flow from a bottle is usually faster than at the breast. Over time, some babies prefer the faster flow of the bottle, or develop a “bottle preference”, especially if they have been struggling with transferring milk at the breast.
- Babies need to “latch on” to the bottle, so that they still open wide to latch onto the breast.
- Babies often take bigger volumes from a bottle than they do from the breast. This may mean that they may either skip a breastfeed after a bottle, or they may not be satisfied after a smaller feed at the breast.
- What is happening with your milk supply when you give a bottle? If you are giving formula that will reduce the demand for breastfeeds that day. If you give formula regularly, this may cause your supply to drop.
How often should I offer a bottle to my breastfed baby?
Teats and bottles for breastfed babies
How do I choose the right bottle for my breastfed baby?
There are many different bottles and types of teats on the market. Many of them promise to be like breastfeeding and ensure that a breastfed baby will happy accept it.
Honestly?
It’s all just marketing. There is no one bottle or teat that is more like breastfeeding. It is mostly about the the right technique (see below), and making sure that your baby is able to feed adequately from the bottle you are using.
Features in IBCLC recommended bottles:
- Pick a bottle that holds a relatively small volume of milk. Most breastfed babies don’t take more than 3-5 oz (90-150 mls) of milk at a time, so you don’t need a big 10 oz bottle!
- Pick a simple teat and bottle combo. There is no need for extra valves or “anti-colic” devices. These are gimmicks to make you spend more money on bottles. Plus, it just means that there are additional pieces to wash, and potentially, increase the risk of infection. The way you reduce trapped wind in babies is the technique you use for feeding (see below).
- If you are also pumping, you may wish to get a bottle that fits directly onto your pump.
- Pick the cheapest one you can find! Expensive bottles are just marketing.
What type of teat should I use for my breastfed baby?
Can your baby get enough bottle teat into their mouth?
Therefore, when you are picking a “good” teat for you baby, the wide based teats often don’t make it easy for babies to maintain a good deep latch. Babies try to compress the base of the teat in the same way they do with the breast, but end up slipping down right to the “nipple” part of the teat, and therefore end up with quite a shallow latch.
A narrow or tapered teat often works better
When giving a baby a bottle, you want quite a bit of the base of the teat to be in their mouth. In fact you may want to visualize where the tip of the teat is – it needs to be around 2 inches back in your baby’s mouth! As a lactation consultant, I often recommend a more narrow, or tapered teat, as breastfed babies find it much easier to draw more of the teat deeply into their mouth. This type of teat, along with getting a baby to open their mouth wide before getting a bottle AND a paced feeding technique will help prevent nipple confusion.
If you look at the photo above, I’d avoid a teat that looks like number 1 as it is very narrow. You may also find that a teat like number 5 doesn’t allow the nipple part of the teat to go far enough back in their mouth and your baby may “slip” off the the wider base and end up with a very shallow latch. While I really like the tapered shape of number 3, both number 2 and 4 may work well, depending on your baby’s latch.
Always choose slow flow
It is important to pick a slow flow teat as well – no matter how old your baby is! It always seems strange to me that as babies get older they are supposed to move up to a faster flowing teat. Babies become more efficient with sucking as they get older so it stands to reason that they will get milk faster, even if the teat stays the same. We want a feed to take around 20 minutes – this allows the brain to register that their tummy is full. Therefore, it makes sense to use a slow flow teat (or newborn) teat from birth right up till the last time they take a bottle as a baby/toddler.
So, finally, which bottle and teat do I recommend as an IBCLC?
- your baby can draw most of the teat into their mouth,
- they manage the flow well, and
- it takes about 20 minutes to take a bottle.
Additionally you want to use a paced feeding technique. I often see parents “pacing” a feed by removing the bottle at regular intervals from their baby’s mouth. This is usually not necessary, as I’ll explain below.
What is paced bottlefeeding, and why is it important for breastfed babies?
I have a whole separate article on paced bottle feeding, which you can read here: Paced bottlefeeding : Rebecca Scott-pillai (rebeccascottpillai.co.uk)
However, the main reasons we recommend paced bottlefeeding are:
1. It slows the flow of bottles down, to make the flow closer to a breastfeeding pattern.
2. It ensures that a baby is not overfed.
3. It makes it easier to go between breastfeeding and bottlefeeding.
In the following video, I talk you through the basics:
What if my breastfed baby refuses to take a bottle?
Some babies just prefer breastfeeding! That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try to give your baby a bottle. The most important thing to do is to be gentle and not let them get upset by repeatedly trying to force them take a bottle.
Tips include:
- Try at a time when your baby is relaxed and calm.
- Experiment with giving a bottle yourself or seeing if your baby maybe takes it better from your partner or other care giver.
- Potentially warm the teat up slightly so it is body temperature (be careful that it’s not too hot).
- Warm the milk in the bottle to body temperature.
- Work with small amounts offered at regular intervals, in a calm and relaxed manner. If your baby refuses to take the bottle, then leave it and try again later.
- Make sure that they aren’t too hungry. Waiting until they are very hungry usually back fires, as they often get more upset and are less tolerant of trying something new!
- Try when they are sleepy.
- Consider any volume of milk that they take from a bottle as a success. Even half an ounce is good.
- If your baby is older (say 5-6 months) you can hand them the bottle to experiment with themselves. Just make sure you still supervise any feeds.
- If you baby is over 4 months, you may want to try a free flowing sippy cup instead of a bottle.
Do you need more support?
I offer a wide range of options for support, including for going back to work as well as bottlefeeding consultations. If you feel like you would like some one to one support, please feel free to get in touch!
