Bottle-Fed 6 Month Old

My son, who is now 10 months old also had reflux and so I understand what its like trying to make feeding time enjoyable. We use Dr. Browns and he has been on the number 2 nipple since about 4 months and he is still on it and has no problem sucking his bottle down. He does however, now that he's older, take his time with his bottle. He likes to drink a little at a time and play and then come back to the bottle. It's very common for them to do exhibit this behavior at this age. They are becoming so interested in their environments that they have trouble focusing on one thing for too long. The only time that my son doesn't get distracted at feeding time is before he's put to bed and usually it takes between 10 and 15 minutes to feed him and burp him and put him to bed. If he truly is having trouble swallowing though it may be an issue that your doctor should address.

I have a 7 month old son with the same problems. I tried a sippy cup (the avent one that fits with his bottles.) He still doesn't care for it but takes it much better. I breast feed so he fights most bottles if I'm trying to feed him but this works.

K.,

My son also had reflux, and we also started out with the Avent bottles. We switched to Dr. Brown's and they were AWESOME.

C.

Trying out different nipples is a good idea, but you end up paying money for a pile of nipples that don't work. Since you said the "3" nipple worked alright for a while at around 5 months old, the flow is probably fine. Adding a little rice cereal to thicken the formula is a good approach. Introducing one new food every week or two is the best approach to be sure your baby doesn't have any food allergies. Both my children started on cereal at 4 months old and (having owned a daycare for some years, I have experience with more than my share of babies) the experience you're describing sounds like a call for some real food. It can be a little frustrating initially, but as they say, this too shall pass.

Hi, K.,

Try yet ANOTHER nipple, and keep trying til you find one that "suits" your picky eater! My daughter would ONLY drink from an Enfamil nipple. Many were tried, all failed. We stuck with the Enfamil nipple til she was ready for a sippy cup. You'll find one he prefers :D Trust me.

Pam H.

hi K.. my daughter is 8 months old and we had similar problems with the faster-flow nipples. I went back to the "1" or "2" avent flow nipples, and she is doing just fine with them. the 2 and 3 just flowed too fast, and with the sucking motion of bottle drinking it just seems too much liquid at once. We're doing 3 bottles a day (total of 24 oz) and i'm also teaching her to drink from a sippy cup for water and juice durng her breakfast/lunch/dinner. My thought is that since she'll be on formula until 12 months, there's no reason to transition too quickly from a bottle to anything else, but at the same time she's learning that other things to drink come from cups and sippy cups, so that transitioning to no formula from a bottle should be easier. have you been giving your baby some solids yet? once you start doing that, their eating habits (and formula/breastfeeding habits) change dramatically.

We had trouble with the whole nipple flow and reflux for my son as well. So when my daughter came along we tried Dr. Browns bottles. She also had very bad reflux and these seemed to work much better along with Enfamil AR formula. The AR is for Added Rice. It was a little more expensive but worth it for us. It is a thicker formula due to the added rice, which doesn't come up as easily with reflux. Less spitting up, less burning/pain for baby. Also, I was able to find the bottles for slightly less $ at Baby Depot (aka Burlington Coat Factory) Good luck!

Have you tried using the playtex bottles with the drop in liners? He may be having a problem with sucking down more than anything else with the larger hole. When I started bottle feeding my daughter at around 2 1/2 months I tried the Avent bottles (she didn't care for them, but every baby has their preference) and then went to the playtex with the drop in liners. I found she had less gas because you are able to get the air out by pushing up on the liner. Also different stage nipples will vary by brand and it may just be time to switch what type of bottle you are using. I wish you the best of luck and hope this helps.

A friend of mine said she had trouble bottle feeding early on with one of her sons, too. She started cup feeding him by removing the nipple and just feeding him with an open cup. It's a little messy, but my 6 month old daughter takes a cup just fine also. My daughter prefers the breasts over a nipple from a bottle because I'm a SAHM it is much easier for me to exclusively breastfeed. I hope this is of some help. Have you considered using other bottle and nipple brands?

Have you tried using Dr. Browns bottles? We switched from Avent to Dr Brown when he was about 1 month old. I felt that the Avent bottles were so "fat" that there was too much air in them and it was making him fussy. So we tried Dr Brown and it has worked great. He's already 18 months old and still using Dr Brown. It's more work to wash them but for us it was very worth it. Also, he was never able to switch to the "3" nipple, flow was too fast, so he still drinks with the level 2 nipple. Good Luck! :)

You may try taking a sterile needle and making the "2" nipples a tiny bit larger so he has something in between the "2" and "3" to get him adjusted. I know some do not recommend doing this but I did it with my daughter and it worked great.

Good luck.

Hey K.,

Can you take a needle and poke a bigger hole in the nipple to get better flow from the milk. Try that and see if it works.
Good Luck,
K

I am not sure what the avent #3 nipples look like, but I know of another brand and its quite a big hole. I tried a bigger nipple w/ my son but he drowned w/ it. What I did was take a pair of scissors and give a tiny little snip to your current nipples. Squeeze the tip so you can see how big the hole will be. It will open the hole just a tad and hopefully enough to allow him to drink a bit faster. If he does have reflux tho, eating slower is better for him. And eating upright, and burping every couple of ounces. And keeping still for about 30min after eating. Those are some helpful tips I found worked for my son. GL.

It might be possible that now that your baby is older, he has a stronger suck, and gags himself with the faster flow bottles, or gets too much air, giving himself reflux.

My dd was breastfed until my milk shut down with my new pregnancy when she was 10 months old. She had the hardest time with ANY bottle- simply because she sucked too hard. She would either collapse the nipple completely, or just get too much air. It would take her forever to drink a bottle, even with "newborn" nipples, just because she would have to take breaks to breathe.

Hi K. :)
I'm not sure about the nipples levels. They seemed to work okay according to the specified months but we did go back and forth a bit like you have to test things out. The main problems we had with feedings were trouble burbing, a lot of gasiness and varoius problems due to allergies. He is now 5 months old and doing much better. Sorry, I'm not very familiar with reflux but I believe that having him sit up for 15-20 minutes after feedings can help to reduce amount of spitting up/gas problems.

Though every case is different, here's what we found that worked: the switch to Dr.Brown's bottles with the tubes for air reduction for less gas, gripe water for the extra gas and fussiness, certain ways of burping him were so much better than others, gently messaging tummy in circular motion and rubbing upward on the back seemed to help. We found things that comforted him while feeding like certain positions, maybe dimmer lighting & soothing sounds may have helped?, taking breaks while sucking on just a pacifier defidently helps him. I think simply that his digestive system grew stronger as he got older was a big change. Switching to soy milk was a must for our babe.

Wishing you the best.
S.
p.s. I just noticed your later response. Solids, huh? Like adding a little rice cereal with formula or switching from formula to liquidy solids? We're not there yet. We want to find more info and try soon. Well, good luck to you. Maybe let us know how it works out?

Hang in there girl! My son is a spirited son too!!! He might be teething and the sucking is agervating his teeth that are coming in. My son wont eat hardley anythhing when he teeths it just drives him Nuts!

Have you tried making the hole in the "2" nipple just a little bit bigger to see if he likes that better? Also, I'm sure you've already tried this...but using the Mylecin drops for gas relief was helpful with my little ones. Maybe try the Playtex nursers with the collapsable bags to alleviate too much air getting into his tummy. I used those with my kids and never had a problem. My kids actually didn't care for the Avents. Just a thought. Good luck.

About feeding your 6 month old, try the bottles that have something in the bottle itself, that keeps the baby from getting gas in the baby stomach, he/she is not getting enough milk because he/she stomach is getting full of gas. Look on line for the bottles that do not produce gas when you feed them. I wish I knew the name of them, I would tell you where to look for them. I feel that is the problem with the baby he/she is full of gas, then change the baby feeding habits, like 9:30am,12:30pm, 4;30pm, then one before bedtime at night, but make sure the baby is being fed properly, without the gas into his/her stomach

I had the same problem with my daughter at 7 month, she refused the bottle all together, so I switched to a drinking cup with a flat straw! You can buy these from rubbermaid(I think) at Walmart or Target. They are rectangular and have a colourful screw on top, with the straw build in to flip up and down, kind of like a sports bottle, just smaller. My daughter immediately liked it and she got the formula that way. After telling my pediatrician, she bought one for the office and told me, that this has helped a great number of Mom's with the same problem! Hope that helps you too.

Have you tried to put a tablespoon of rice cereal in w/the bottle and give him a #4 nipple. This will make him feel more full and help w/the reflux. It helped w/my daughter. Also are you starting stage 1 jar food? If you start trying that it will help him w/the hunger and maybe he won't get so frustrated w/the bottle because he's getting full from something else. He still needs the bottle of course but he could probably do both.

I've had great luck with the madela bottles. My daughter did great and my almost 6 month old son uses them now. They are sold at babysRus or you can order them online. The best thing about them is they are BPA free!

Have you tried using a "2" and just poking the hole a bit bigger? It may be that the "2" is too slow but the "3" is too fast so poke an additional hole that is in between and see if that helps. Also, have you started him on any baby food or baby cereal yet?? It may help to transition him a bit better. Failing this, I would change to the "3" and he will adapt to it. He may fuss and act like he doesn't want it but he will take it if he is hungry enough regardless of what size nipple is on it. Good Luck!

Dear K., I am a Mom who has had kids with depression, and I am also a Psychiatric nurse. I work with children and teens in my private practice as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. What I do is teach patients how to use some of the principles of natural medicine at home, so they can be more independent in their health and less dependent on medications and on a birage of healthcare providers. One suggestion is to have you son do some sort of art project. This will help him to be expressive. Many of the problems with teens is that they don't have good command of vocabulary to fully express themselves, and they may also be suffering from poor self esteem which lowers their ability to be expressive. It's the repression of human expression that leads to depression. (Boy that's almost a limerick!). Encourge self-expression. TAlk therapy helps too, but in my experience working with children in psychiatry, they really do better from a group therapy, art therapy, and such.

S. M. www.mcim.org

Hi K.,
Oh how I feel for you. My 8 month old was always a fussy nurser, pulling off, screaming,then sucking and coughing, etc. But it got really bad at about 5-6 months of age. She ate solids like a champ, but didn't want to nurse or take bottles. Every feed was a challenge. We finally had a feeding specialist listen with a stethescope and determine that she was having trouble swallowing the thin liquid milk. Her epiglotis was not properly shutting all the way over her tracia. So we now use a thickener that makes her milk the consistancy of honey and we use a squeeze bottle and sometimes she sucks and sometimes we squeeze the milk in and she swallows it and most days now..sigh...I spoon feed her her milk. She now gets approx. 12oz of milk from the bottle and another 4 oz mixed with cereal twice a day. You might check into that for him. Our problem didn't arrise until 6 months really. Best of luck!
A.

hi K., im a single mom of a three year old and i was in your shoes to the "T". my daughter never made it to a "3" nipple.she would fight it too. so knowing it was going to take longer to feed her i would start the bottle sooner.my daughter also had reflux, and became a breath holder and would almost make hersel pass out. my dr. put her on prevacid (children doses of course..lol)she was on it for about 2 months and never had another problem to this day with it.when i told my dr. about the issue with the nipple he asked what the rush was? she wasnt under nurished and was content with the "2" nipple so let her stay on it. i did what he said, but then i got tired of it and switched her to a big girl cup(aka. sippy cups) she was drinking from a regular glass at just over a year. but every child is different and if he is happy with the 2 nipple why not just let him have it? hes still drinking and getting what he needs.... no harm in it. some children just dont go the way the books say...lol good luck

K.- I had two babies 10 1/2 months apart. Neither of them went past the avent 2 nipple and they were both off the bottle by 1. (My son was 13 months) What we did was widen the nipple with a pin and added rice cereal to the formula. This made the consistency thicker and they chugged it. Both mine had trouble with the faster flow nipple with the thinner formula. My son had a lot of problems too when he was little, colic etc. Good luck--you'll make it through I promise!!!

We had the SAME problems with the avent bottles/nipples at the same age. She actually stopped gaining weight. We ended up switching to Dr. Brown bottle system....problem solved. Good luck.

Hi K.,

Did you think about increasing the holes in the nipple that makes it hard for the baby to get milk from?

Have you thought about giving your baby massages? Look up on the internet to see how to give your baby a massage.

There are oils for baby's massages.

Hope this helps. Good luck. D.

Maybe its not the nipple that the problem. Maybe its the babies position. My sixth month old son use to have reflux, but its done now so its not an issue. Halfway through a bottle he will start to pull away and get fussy, but if I lay him down on flat on the sofa he will then eat fine, or vice versa from laying down he will want to be held. Wierd.

Hi K.,

I am a SAHM with 3 & 1 on the way. I breastfed my children as long as I could, but it never lasted long. All 3 of my kids were bottle fed more than breast. The bottles I used and never had a problem with is the Platex Vent-air. They are great bottles, since they do not trap air in them like regular bottles. They are wonderful for the babies that have the fussiness & gas issues. That is the only suggestion that I could come up with. He may eat better out of that type of bottle. I wish you luck & God bless!