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slow bottle feeder, help please (also in bottlefeeding chat)



My LO takes AGES to drink his bottle and it is becoming quite stressful. Any advice on how to speed him up please?

He was on Tommee Tippee bottles but didn't get on with the teats as he couldn't form a seal and leaked everywhere. He is now on boots wide necked bottles. It takes around 45-1hr for him to drink 5oz! where as my nephew, who is 4 weeks older at 12 weeks downs his in 15 min!!

Replies

  • I cant really offer any advice except to say he will probably get faster as he grows. When he gets to 3 months you could try faster flow teats to see if that helps.

    Some babies are just slower feeders and it often takes my twins 45 mins each to finish a bottle.

    Remember it wont be forever, thats the mantra I use to keep me sane!!!
  • my lo was exactly the same, he was taking an hour to finish (or almost finish lol) his bottles, it took most of his awake time just to feed him! he has improved and is now 21 weeks but can still take his time, i think the record is 25 minutes and that felt like a miracle! i think some are just guzzlers and some are more gourmet feeders and like to take their time!

    hope your lo speeds up a little for your sake!

    Keeley and Rafferty
  • Stressful for who? If he is happy drinking his bottle slowly, let him drink it slowly.
  • the problem I have is that he does not seem happy drinking slowly. If he was content through the whole feed then I would not find it so stressful as obviously I don't want to force feed him quicker!

    The problem is that he screams for food, frantically sucks for about two minutes and takes about an oz then gets stressed, thrashes around, pushes the teat out, starts choking and spits half of it down himself. When you stop let him calm down and try to wind him he gets stressed for the bottle again, we put it to his mouth and he takes it in and pushes it out again, sucks for about 30 sec and does the whole thing again!! He also falls asleep halfway through and then we have the whole thing of waking him up/changing his nappy etc to get him to finish it off!!

    He is obviously hungry but I just really don't know what to do to make his feeding times more pleasurable for BOTH of us. I don't want him to have bad memories which may effect his thinking about food and mealtimes later on!
  • What sort of teat do you use?
  • We're currently using the boots wide neck medium flow teat but we had the same problems with the Tommee Tippee ones albeit that he leaked even more with those as he could not form a seal around them as they were too wide!
  • have you tried a variflow teat? maybe putting him in control of the milk flow might help a little?#

    sorry, nak!
  • Grrr BE ate my reply!

    We went up a teat size at around 8 weeks. Babies are supposed to be able to finish the bottle within 15-20 minutes. You can always go down again if lo struggles.

    You could try the variflow if you have that option, but they don't work for all babies. xx
  • Hi Rascal 79.I know this thread is years old but it's the first post I've read the describes exactly what my DS is like. Did you ever find a solution? 

  • Just up the teat size or go onto variflow

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