How I got my youngest child to eat from a bottle when the boob wasn't around.

I was recently asked if I had any advice on how to get a 5 month old to drink breast milk from a bottle so that mom could get some time to take care of a few things on occasion.  Fair question. Fortunantly as a dad I have had to exculsivly rely on bottle feedings. My wife is a weekend nurse and works 12 hour shifts, which really means shes gone for about 14 hours a day two days in a row, so bottle feeding are essential for my kiddos.

Now in truth if i had been asked for advice on this with my girls, I wouldn't really have any. My girls took bottles lie champs with ZERO transition issues. It was great! So I was a bit surprised at the initial difficulty of feeding my son via bottle. It took about 3 weeks to really get the hang of it but it would have been much quicker if I had gotten the advice I am about to give.

You would sure think that food is food and if a baby gets hungry that it will eat just for the sake of eating. Well..... not so much. I could not for the life of me get my boy to take a bottle the first weekend my wife was back to work postpartum. My first thought was that maybe he wasn't actually hungry. After going through the "rounds" if you make, you know, diaper change, bouncing, burping attempt, trying to get farts out and carried in the Ergo to induce napping, it became clear that he was hungry and he was not gonna eat from the bottle.

In a bit of a panic at this point, I grabbed another bottle (a Soothie bottle, I was using a Medela) poured the milk in heated it up a bit more and lo and behold he took it. In my mind I figured he must of taken it because he liked the nipple better. Over the rest of the weekend we struggled with the Soothie bottle but got enough food down to keep him fed, but it was by no means easy.

Convinced to have a better weekend next time I started to really watch what he responded well to and what didn't make a difference. Here's the list of things he liked and changed his attitude towards gladly accepting the bottle in order of importance.

1 Heat
2 Skin Contact
3 Nipple Firmness

By far the most important thing to get him to take his boobie juice willingly the temp needed to be right. Now your body temp is right around 97 F so you would think this is sufficient temp to keep them happy but not for this guy. My wife would fresh express and leave me with a bottle to use immediately and he would bauk at it every time. If however I would take the fresh milk and warm it just a bit he downed it all right away. I have found that the optimal temp for my fussy guy to take his bottle with ease is between 115 F and 120 F. Now you don't want to have to stick a thermometer in a bottle every time so here's a nice little tip to use. Tap the nipple on the bottom of your wrist. It should be almost hot but induce absolutely  no pain at all. If you feel any sting period, it is too hot and you should either let it cool by standing or run the bottle under some cold water while swirling (Not Shaking. Never Shake Breast milk) the bottle. Test again until it temp properly. Also if the baby flinches at all when first taking the bottle it is still to hot and you should continue to cool it down. This one thing usually does the trick for getting him to eat though.

Next is skin contact. This sounds a bit odd especially if you're leaving your kiddo with someone whose not particularly close to your family. Let me explain. A baby who is exclusively breastfed is used to having their face jammed against a decent amount of skin while eating, so when they transition to a bottle you can imagine that a rubber nipple just doesn't really compare. Have you ever noticed though that babies love to eat your fingers and knuckles? Why do they do that? Skin contact. As the daddy in this scenario it would be perfectly acceptable to use this to my advantage when feeding him but the way i'm gonna explain should be acceptable for nearly anyone who you would trust to feed your kiddo to use. The nipple of the bottle is not suffiecnt contact but by taking and wrapping your fingers around the base of the nipple you can create a ring of skin to make contact with the little ones face and create that skin to skin sensation that they've come to expect when eating. Check out these pictures to get a better idea of what I mean.

Lastly, nipple firmness. Both my son and my niece seem to do better with a nipple that is not very firm. Typically momma nipples are not very firm while baby is eating and the baby can mold the nipple to the inside of their mouths while eating. If you use a very firm nipple this malleability is greatly reduced. Above I had said that the soothie bottle worked for my son at first. Well he quickly changed his tone when we applied the first two tips and he started to actually eat. We found that he liked the Medela nipples more because they were softer and he could push the nipple tip inward with his tongue and make it pop in and out while he suckles. See the picture to better understand the nipple being pushed inward.


After the second weekend together of bottle feeding with my boy, we were practically champs and at nearly 6 months now I know what works for him and he is a happy bottle eater.

Every kid is gonna be different but I have had similar issues with my niece who is the same age as my son and have had similar success with bottle feeding. Hope this all helps and please leave your own feedback and advice to help this momma.