Bottle Refusal Doesn’t Have to Happen
After navigating breastfeeding and bottlefeeding for 3 kids, and supporting a lot of breastfeeding families with how to feed their babies, I have been able to come up with a few simple rules to help put an end to bottle refusal.
Bottle refusal sucks. I lived through it with my second, and it wasn’t solvable. By the time I was done doing all the wrong things to support my goal, my goal was out of reach. It is a very real thing that can happen.
With my third, I knew that bottle refusal was not an option for me, again. That baby had to take a bottle. It wasn’t negotiable.
How to Proactively Avoid Bottle Refusal
Here are the 5 basic principles I find support a baby being able and willing to take a bottle without a fight - this is bottle supportive breastfeeding management:
If you need your baby to be able to take a bottle to make breastfeeding work for you, we want to introduce it early.
Babies learn what we establish as normal to be normal. If the bottle and the breast are both part of the routine, it’s not a big deal. Routine means frequently and consistently used in a way that supports your goals.
Some babies do okay with any bottle. Some babies have their latch destroyed with a crappy “breast like” bottle marketed as if it was an aid to successful breastfeeding.
A trick to good bottle feeding is that I don’t want to encourage your baby to do anything with the bottle nipple you don’t want done to yours. So, let’s skip the drama of bottle-induced latching challenges and start with a breastfeeding friendly bottle that helps encourage the same oral mechanics your baby would use at the breast.
Nipple confusion isn’t real. Your baby isn’t dumb; they are just little.
They are hard-wired to opt for the easiest option available, so if you make the bottle too easy, they will gravitate away from the breast.
Flow preference is real! It’s just easier for parents to believe the issue was out of their control than to accept the fact they used the drink and drown position with 8 ounces of milk in a level 2 Comotomo that ruined the breastfeeding relationship.
If we make the bottle the same amount of work, we don’t create the incentive to protest the breast.
We act on signs of oral dysfunction, body tension, and feeding challenges at the FIRST SIGN!
We don’t wait and see what’s going to happen before intervening. When I see a child reach for the hot stove, I don’t wait to see if they redirect before I pull them away. The consequence of the burn is too high to wait and see.
The consequence to your breastfeeding relationship is extremely high when we see the early warning signs of feeding concerns and don’t intervene with skilled lactation care ASAP. The earlier your baby is getting skilled care, the better.
Just say no to tongue, lip, and buccal tie revisions without skilled lactation care.
I wish you could guarantee snip-and-go success for every baby, but it doesn’t work like that. Often the success stories are still hardcore compensating for ongoing oral dysfunction, and they just got lucky the impact wasn’t super terrible.
Revisions are surgical interventions aimed at improving oral function. They need to be well-timed in order to assure that things go as well as possible to minimize the chances of unintended consequences like breast or bottle refusal.
In Summary,
⁃ We offer early, routinely, and use latch-friendly bottles with age-appropriate amounts of milk and good paced feeding.
⁃ We monitor for signs of oral dysfunction, and if we have issues, we intervene quickly and effectively with skilled lactation care.
Are you sure that bottle refusal won’t happen if I do those things?
Bottle refusal related to feeding management - nope won’t happen, nor will breast refusal related to feeding management. Feeding management issues are by far the most common reason we see these issues in babies, and they are avoidable!
If your baby has underlying issues that complicate feeding, we may still see this issue, but at the first sign, if feeding has been managed properly, we know it’s a signal of an issue we need to evaluate. It’s also been my professional experience that even when we run into these issues with good management in place, they are easier to fix for the family. So, it’s still a possible issue, but in most cases, we can identify and manage quicker - so bottle supportive breastfeeding management is still a good call in these situations.
If you are concerned, or you are not able to feed your baby how you wish, schedule a consultation today!
