Bottle feeding advice needed

[Bexsta101]

Hi everyone,

We've got a 5 weeks old baby who has been bottle fed from the beginning due to not latching onto me very well. We were told he has a high pallete but when we saw a cranial osteopath he said it wasn't really that high.

We have struggled feeding him from the beginning, we use MAM bottles and have tried teet size 0-2, I've also tried Dr browns but he gagged on the longer teet instantly and tried Tommie tippee bottle which he couldn't get a good seal around and I even feed him in my legs that are crossed now to keep him as upright as possible.

Whenever we feed him it's as if he is choking, gagging or in instant wind pain, he pulls away from the bottle and when he does eat it's like he struggles to swallow the milk. He has sooo much wind from the bottom end it's unreal, I try burping him but they don't seem to like to come up.

Any advice would be super helpful right now. I have taken a video but don't think this site will upload a video.

Coming from a desperate mumma

Sorry to read you and your little one are going through this! I had a hard-to-bottle-feed baby too. She had mild lingual and tongue tie but not enough to be snipped, and she would only latch in a very particular way/angle. The only bottles she would accept were the Lansinoh Momma ones. The teats on those are a very different shape to all the rest. Might be worth a try.

It could also be worth reading up a little about reflux symptoms. For quite a few babies, the sphincters between throat and stomach aren’t very strong for the first few months, so they get reflux of their milk+stomach acid into their oesophagus, and it feels pretty bad for them. My DD was one of those babies, and it was so hard for us. There’s not much that can be done about this by the parent except the things you’re already doing (keeping upright for feeds etc.) - the only real fix is waiting until the sphincter muscles are stronger. If you think it seems like reflux, your GP should check baby over for reflux symptoms. (And if your GP doesn’t take it seriously to start with, your health visitor could be helpful getting them to.)

If your baby does have reflux, there are some drugs that can be prescribed to relieve the discomfort it causes. I was very anti the drugs, and declined for weeks to try other things instead, but in the end they really were the only thing that made a substantial difference to DD. And she is thriving now at 2 years!

It sounds like you’re doing all the right things so please don’t feel like a failure, I know how horrible those early feeding issues can feel, lots of us on here can sympathise - you’re not alone.