Alternatives to bottles for breastfed babies

A quick fly-by tour of syringes, feeding tubes, cups and other equipment for giving a top up feed to a baby whilst protecting the breastfeeding journey.

It’s important to ask your IBCLC or breastfeeding support service about safe usage, cleaning and breastmilk storage for each of these tools.

Some suggestions in this film:

A lot of parents are nervous of using a bottle, they're worried that their baby will struggle to go between the breast and the bottle. This theory is called “Nipple confusion”.

Actually, what we know about this is that there is less of a case of nipple confusion which is slightly dated information and more a preference for the easy flow of the bottle. So on my website, there's a blog called bottle feeding breastfed babies and that shows technique which is known as intuitive bottle feeding or paced feeding. This explains that you can actually use a bottle to feed your breastfed baby whilst protecting your breastfeeding journey. Click here to read that blog.

Why avoid bottles for breastfeeding babies?

If a baby has recently had tongue tie division you may be instructed to avoid bottles for a week or so to help reduce the chance of a need for re-division if the frenulum re-forms too far forward. .

Sometimes, especially if a baby is unexpectedly separated from their mother, a family might not have bottles available.

If you are in the very early days and feeding colostrum, a bottle will not be appropriate. Feed volumes are so small (2-10ml a portion on the first day for instance).

And then of course there are those breastfeeding babies who refuse to take a bottle-read my blog here called “How to get your breastfed baby to take a bottle”.

I’d love to hear what worked for your family. Do you remember using any of these tools in the early days?

If you have any questions regarding anything mentioned in this post, please feel free to get in touch.

Sally

This blog relates to my information on “The 3 keeps” found on instagram here.