DS drinking too fast and inhaling milk, new mum panic!

[nannynome]

Will he be ok? It's a regular occurrence with his expressed breast milk bottle feed. He drinks so fast and then inhales it and I always end up panicking and worrying about him. I am presuming I am just being a new mum with a pfb issue and it won't cause any problems and I should calm down?

Have you tried a smaller teat?

Literally inhaling milk and choking?

What kind of bottles are you using? I agree that you might like to try a slower teat, or perhaps a bottle which makes him work for the milk, such as a medela Calma or a breastflow.

It's the smallest, slowest one on the doctor brown bottles. He is normally fine in the middle, it is the greedy beginning bit and tired end bit. Have taken to putting him on the boob towards the end so he falls asleep with slowed down milk. I think I am just being daft and overly worrying but it freaks me out to hear him start coughing, snorting and whatnot :(

The calma one is actually worse for it for some reason we were on those first

My son does this but I thought it was reflux. Is he windy afterwards?

Yes he can be. Although we have added gripe water and infacol into the bottle feeding routine and that seems to be fixing it. Some feeds he is fine and others he is all over the shop.

I was told to sit my ds up for bottles, hold them so the teat is only just full of milk. That way they drink slower. And give breaks, just like they get on the boob.

What Sunflower said. There is a really good article on responsive bottle feeding on the Best for Babes website, sorry I don't have the link.

My DD use to do this, it scared the life out of me. I broke down in tears quite a few times in the beginning. The things that helped were a smaller teat, I used the Avent bottles because I found their teats were the best for her. Feeding her while she was sitting up, it was harder to get use to this, but I eventually managed. Having her milk ready as quick as we could, my DD use to want her food and want it NOW, if we didn't have it ready for her she would get really upset and end up really gulping it down. Give a break every couple of minutes, forcing her to drink more slowly. It's just a pause really, maybe to the count of 5 or 10?

It did get better the older she got, however she is 19 months and still inhales and chokes on her drinks sometimes. As she has gotten older though, we've taught her to cough when she does it and that seems to help.

I know it can be scary, I hope some of these tips help your DS and hopefully he will grow out of it soon, for both of your sakes.