will i encourage bottle-preference if i move to faster-flow bottles?

perry7285 · January 2011

so i discovered from a post the other day that as your baby gets older, you should move to faster-flow nipples. whoops. didn't know that. my 4-month-old has been on slow-flow nipples his whole life, so i ordered some medium and fast-flow ones.

my concern--i'm already having troubles with bottle preference now that i work and he gets most of his daytime food from bottles. will giving him faster-flow nipples make the bottle preference worse (since it will be so easy to get milk out of the bottle)?

emmyloustu · January 2011

It might, but it might not. Totally depends on the baby. Eliza never did well with faster flow nipples and at 13mo she is STILL on slow flow. Even on the slow flow, there were times she definitely preferred the flow of the bottle.

shipoopiisforme · January 2011

i would not switch to the faster flow if you want to continue breast feeding. about a month after i switched to a level 2 nipple my daughter would no longer ever take the boob, it was just too slow for her and she didn't want to work that hard anymore. that was the beginning of the end for breastfeeding for me.

Mouseygail · January 2011

I wouldn't move up if he is ok with the bottles now and your DCP isn't complaning about how long it takes for him to eat. I forgot about moving up too until around then...which happened to be when he decided to stop taking bottles all together...so i hoped that a faster flow would fix that..but no...I think babies just like what they like...so I wouldn't rock the boat!

TheSkimmy · January 2011

You will know if your DC wants to change. They will start fighting the bottle. They get frustrated that it doesn't go faster. I just changed DD's and you could tell it was too slow for her- she kept pulling awat and going back on.

I don't think it would hurt to try a medium flow.

muppet.fan · January 2011

emmyloustu:
It might, but it might not. Totally depends on the baby. Eliza never did well with faster flow nipples and at 13mo she is STILL on slow flow. Even on the slow flow, there were times she definitely preferred the flow of the bottle.

This. You can try it and see how your LO does. We used drop-ins for E and she stayed on the slow flow nipple the entire time she was on bottles. We tried a medium flow a couple times and it always made her super gassy, so we kept going back to slow! But I know others who were on fast flow and their LOs went back and forth between bottle and breast just fine.

caityr · January 2011

It depends-at 6.5 months dd uses level 2 and 3 Born Free and Avent nipples but still nurses. I see what the other ladies are saying though. Maybe just stick with what you have for now but keep the faster flow on hand.

Cassian · January 2011

We tried switching to fast flow, and she hate it. Then I read on the BF forum that this can cause bottle preference due to not having to work for it. I didn't want to take a chance, plus she didn't like it anyeah, so we just stick with our slow flow and everyone is happy.

schmoodle · January 2011

I chose not to "upgrade" nipples to avoid that risk. So our little guy was on level 1 nipples until he stopped nursing around 8.5 months. I had so little milk to begin with that I didn't want to do anything that might make him view the bottle as a better/more efficient food source more than he already did, because one skipped session could have literally ruined my supply. For those with regular supply, I'm not sure how bad it could be.

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will i encourage bottle-preference if i move to faster-flow bottles?

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