6 Successful Ways to Get Your Baby to Take a Bottle

Time flies by so fast it is almost criminal. I remember myself pregnant as if it was yesterday… And here we are, 9 months after the birth of our last addition to the family! So with her, I stayed home the longest and was supposed to go back to work last month.

All of my kids were exclusively breastfed. My son and older daughter got used to the bottle between the age of 2 and 4 months. I did not do it, in both cases it was the person I left them with at that time, and automatically, as they understood mom`s boob was not available, they took the bottle. No big fuss, no crying, no frustration- they just took it. So naturally, I had no worries about my little princess doing the same in daycare.

But she didn`t.

We had one horrible week of adjusting to daycare. Every time they tried to give her the bottle (which was filled with my own freshly pumped milk) she would just cry and try to push it away.

In the end, I said I would only go back to work if I could drive over to breastfeed 3 times during my working hours.

The funny thing was, one week after that all daycare centers were closed because of COVID-19 and we both were saved from being separated. Yep, there is an upside to every disaster.

Being home with my baby -again, I started thinking about the whole situation. In the end, everything will be going back to normal, and this time I want her to be ready.

So here is what I tried and what could help to get your baby to take the bottle. (All of the tips apply to pumped breastmilk as I have absolutely no experience with formula.)

1. Have somebody else do it

This was the first tip I heard and used with my first two children. And really- by the age of four months, both of them got used to the bottle without any complications. But there is a chance this only works for relatively young babies. So if yours is a little older and already understands certain things, you might want to combine a few of the following tips in the list…Also, at that age, it might be even better if you, as a trusted person show and teach your baby that a bottle is not scary. Afterward, when your baby is at daycare or with a different person she will be able to connect the bottle to you as something known and trusted.

2. Warm the nipple

Sounds very reasonable, doesn`t it? If your baby is used to breastfeeding she is used to having something nice and warm in her mouth, not a cold piece of rubber. Go ahead and warm the nipple in some hot water until it feels nice and try again!

3. Make it feel like the real thing

During pumping or massaging your breast you surely noticed that your nipple has more than one tiny “hole” for the milk to come out. That is because our milk travels through several tubes in our breasts. As for the bottle, there is only one hole and our baby has a whole other nursing experience. The good news, you can make drinking from a bottle a very similar experience by opening tiny holes all around the nipple with a sterilized needle. But be careful to do a clean job and not get any rubber loose.

4. Apply something tasty

In order to get your baby to suck long enough to realize that the content of the bottle tastes the same as your milk (because it is) you can apply something tasty. It does not have to be sweet, my baby girl likes Tehina, for example, and she would just chew and suck on the bottle until it was all gone and the milk started to come out. Another option would be a date or carob syrup for example. If you decide to go with the sweet version, make sure you do it only the first couple of times until your baby gets used to it because it really can hurt his or her teeth.

5. Try a different position

When I decided to start and get my baby used to the bottle myself, I felt that if I want to do it in our traditional breastfeeding position, she would expect to be breastfed and automatically reject the bottle. Sounds logical, doesn`t it? This got me to think- maybe it is all about teaching her a different kind of “eating experience”? So I tried and seated her back to my belly, legs on my legs, and back of the head on my chest. And she got so curious about what was going to happen! When the connection between the old and the known is not made, there may be some readiness for the new.

6. Don`t try when the baby wants to sleep

Last but not least, after we had a couple of successful bottle-feeding times, there was a one-time regression when I tried again and she was sleepy. If your baby like mine is used to falling asleep while nursing it maybe won`t be a good idea to try the bottle when he or she is tired. When babies nurse for sleeping it is mostly more pacifying than eating and it will be very frustrating for both of you to introduce the bottle this way.

About the bottle brand…

For those of you asking what bottle or nipple works best- I really don`t think you can generalize this. what works best for one baby may not work for another. All of the bottle brands claim that theirs is the closest to nature or a woman`s. But the fact is- they are all different from ours, otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this post right now and you wouldn’t be reading it.

For the record, I used Tommee Tippee with my first, and afterward, with both my girls I used MUM because they have a glass bottle.

Once a woman asked on a Facebook group what bottle would be recommended for her breastfed baby who did not want to take the bottle. I think there were about 25 replies at least and I also am pretty sure that about every brand there is was mentioned…

Conclusion

There are many ways to trick our babies into new and unknown things. Sometimes we assume certain steps are more difficult than they are. And very often it may be our own hesitance and unsureness that stand in our way. Children learn to adapt fast and much more easily than we expect. If you want your baby to take the bottle, it does not have to be hard or frustrating for either of you. Take it as a game and play with your baby through the mentioned steps. Relax, take it easy and slowly, and remember- your baby trusts and feels YOU. Being stressed will stress out your baby and you both won`t get anywhere.

What about you? Do you have any tips that worked for you that are not mentioned here? Or do you want to share your bottle story?