Medela calma bottle... Am I being thick?!

[massagegirl]

Bought one of these as doing combination feeding and with tommee tippee bottles she seems to gulp and dribble milk a lot. Just tried the calma as it said she'd need to work for the milk more but the same thing happened. What are we doing wrong?!

What size teat are you using? Sounds like it's coming out too fast.

The packaging says that is one teat for all as its led by the baby sucking and they have to work for the milk, she certainly didn't have to work for it!

The exact same thing happened to us, we have been searching for a bottle so I can express and after a scary time with nearly choking on a tommee tippee bottle we tried the medela and the same thing happened!
I did read online that if your baby sucks pretty hard then it will gush out?!? I don't understand it but as we have a greedy guzzler I can only assume that's what happens.

I have been searching long and hard for a slow flow bottle that won't drown him so I can express.
The breastflow seems to work great for us and also have the playtext one with the bag as battling with wind.

Probably not much help massagegirl but have you tried the Medela Calma yourself? I tried it out of curiosity (because I had the opposite problem with baby not getting hang of it at first) and you do have to suck reasonably hard if it's all put together correctly which I presume it is (i.e. using all three parts). Maybe your baby does just have a particularly strong suck that her swallowing ability hasn't caught up with yet, in which case it will probably be trial and error with slow flow bottles until you get one that works.
Rather than buying a whole load of bottles do you have friends or people in a mother and baby group who might be willing to lend you one of their bottles for an hour or two to try out? That way you could give other bottles a go without spending a fortune on trial and error.

The Calma bottles are a nightmare to put together. Do you have the alingment correct? The instructions are rubbish.

I did try sucking it too. Will make sure it's lined up properly. Agree instructions are crap. Breast feedi g going do badly I think she'll probably end up full formula.

It took me, my DH, my Dad and my Aunt - working together - to get the Calma assembled properly!

Have you tried a bf helpline if you're struggling? I found the LLL really good when I needed advice.

Both bottles are very different - so decide for which one you want to go otherwise baby can get confused.
Calma bottle need to be correct assembled - which can be a bit tricky at the beginning.
The special use of the bottle is to breast and bottle feed parallel to keep the baby's sucking ability strong.
The milk is to be drawn out via a small valve only when the baby is sucking strong enough - like on the breast. It's not flowing/dribbling into baby's mouth like with the average feeding bottle which can make them swallowing a lot of air while feeding and therefore producing a lot of wind and discomfort which then has to come out again via burping and farthing.
Great success with young breast and bottle feed babies as long the bottle exists. Ones they get older and breast feed is established well then they can cope better with any teat/bottle.
NUK has small feeding hole teats
Good luck !

Porridge I can't find anywhere that shows you exactly how to put the medela together. I thought we had it right, nothing dribbled out when turned upside down, but when she drank from it she gulped and milk dribbled from her mouth which is what happens with tt which is what we wanted to avoid. Argh.

I've watched videos online. We've put it together correctly. This morning she downed half the bottle in about a minute. Ridiculous waste of money, pile of rubbish. Tommee tippee 100% better.