My Little Guzzler

[Michaela's Mom]

My little one is 7 months old. She was breast fed for 5 months. The problem i have is that she has an extremely strong sucking action on the bottle  and i am still using Newborn (Slow flowing) teats to prevent her from choking. I have tried using Medium teats, but she chokes every time. I use the "flanged" teats as she tends to suck in a lot of air as well. I can only use the slow flowing teats when she has plain milk - if i add porridge to her bottle, i have to use a medium teat and she usually chokes!. She also tends to collapse the teats all the time because she sucks so strongly - any advice???

[Lªuren]

Sharon the only advise I can offer you is to try and find a bottle at is designed for anti colic, these allow air to flow out the bottom of the bottle and the teat will not collapse.

DS uses two types of bottles a standard bottle and an anti colic, when using the standard the teat collapses and I have to take him off and put him back on it (very annoying) the anti colic bottle allows the air out so to doesn't disrupt his flow and the teat won't collapse.

The anti colic bottles usually unscrew at the bottle, look for that on the packaging. Other bottle manufactures claim to be anti-colic but only because they offer wide neck bottles.

HTH's

[Kimberly®]

Have you tried disposables at all? the platex advance ones work great for preventing to much air intake and the nipples don't collapse.

[becky1969]

I wanted to say that my son is a guzzler too. When we brought him from the hospital (he was FF), he was downing 4 oz bottles! I thought that couldn't POSSIBLY be right, especially since I'd read BW books, and now looking back I think it was because he was such a big sucker he was just sucking as fast as he could and didn't realize he was full.

When we first switched to Level 2 nipples at 3 months, he did a lot of choking at first too for the same reason you're talking about. We use Dr. Brown's bottles, though, so we don't have a collapsing problem. What I did was started him out on a bottle with a Level 2 (faster flow) nipple for about 2-3 oz, then when he started choking, we'd go back to a Level 1 (slow flow) nipple to complete (we couldn't do Level 1 the whole time because it would take too long and he'd get frustrated and wouldn't finish). After about a week, we were able to do a whole bottle with Level 2 nipples alone. We'd still get some choking, but not as much. After 2 weeks, the choking stopped. I think he must have learned to adjust to the flow?

You might try a Dr. Brown's bottle and see how she does, or try alternating the slow and medium nipples so she can get used to the additional flow. She's probably getting frustrated with the slow flow of the newborn nipple, and I know my son wasn't eating as much as he needed because of that. He'd get frustrated and stop 2-3 oz. before he was really done. Once we got adjusted to the new nipples, his daily intake went up quite a bit! I was surprised how much more he wanted to eat.

[Lªuren]

Sharon
Another tip (I had to use today and thought of you) is when you know your Lo is sucking so hard the teat will collapse, gentle try to the release the suction by moving the teat to the left or right, so a small gap is created in the corners of your LO's mouth and the teat.

It works for me and he never misses a suck, so it doesn't put him off.