Parent Diaries

How finding the right teat flow really shaped my feeding journey

Codi’s Bottle Feeding Journey with Son Luca

We hear from Codi as she tells us all about her bottle feeding journey with her 7 month-old son Luca, and how it proved to be a more complicated journey than she experienced with her eldest child Mia. We understand how the different teat flows really made a difference to their feeding journey and how they found the right one for them. Codi, her husband and two children live in Australia.

My bottle journey starts off with my eldest Mia. With her it was easy, like clock-work. I expressed for her nightly bottle up until she was 6 months-old and then she went onto formula. I’ve always used the Closer to Nature bottles and progressed from the slow through to medium then fast flow teats, she never had any issues and by 12 months old moved onto the transition bottles/cups.

In comparison my 7-month-old boy Luca’s bottle journey has been an experience to say the least.
When he was born, I tried to do the same thing as with Mia, expressing for a nightly bottle but he couldn’t grasp the idea of the bottle, so I gave up after 2 weeks and exclusively breast fed.

At around 8 weeks he was still a very hungry baby, so I decided to bring out the bottles again and give him a formula bottle to go to bed every night. This gave me a break from constant feeding plus, he’d slept slightly longer before his next breastfeed. The only problem I had was he would fall asleep constantly during bottle feeding with a slow flow teat, so I tried the medium, but this ended up being too fast for him. He started refusing the bottle and not drinking anything.

Luckily, I came across the vari teat and oh my goodness this was a life changer! Once he realised that he could control the flow himself he more than looked forward to his bedtime formula feed and went to sleep after a full bottle happily. Still not sleeping through the night but getting longer stretches. As he was happy with the vari teat I decided by 4 months to add extra formula feeds during the day and slowly weaned him off breastfeeding.

By 6 months he was happy to have his formula feeds in his bottles so I got the Perfect Prep machine and extra bottles to start full time formula feeding. He is now finally on a better day time schedule, like his sister. He is slowly weaning off his night feeds which is a big relief. After 6 months of no sleep we are down to one or two bottles overnight. Thankfully the Perfect Prep is quiet enough to make him a bottle without disturbing anyone in the house!

After all that, my first experience with bottle feeding was a dream but my second journey was a battle, having the proper bottles and teats and tools available has made it finally work out. Mummy and baby are both finally on a good schedule and happily feeding. Also having the freedom to pass certain feeds onto his dad when I’m tired or busy is such a beautiful experience for both of us. He gets time to bond with his daddy while I get a nice rest, or some housework done. 

My advice to other parent’s is to listen to your built-in intuition, don’t let outside pressure from friends and loved ones stop you from trying bottle feeding. I constantly fought with my head and heart over bottle feeding my son as I thought I have to breastfeed. That’s what I did with my daughter, and everyone around me said that was perfect. Finally giving into those feelings of me knowing bottle feeding would be better was the best thing I did, for me and my son. He went from constantly feeding and unsettled with no routine to happily bottle feeding on a schedule and sleeping through the night.