About paced bottle feeding

This page belongs to collection of short articles and videos in plain language, called When baby cries a lot in the first few months of life. Together, these articles and videos will give you a brief and simple summary of the Possums 5-domain approach to the crying baby. For comprehensive information on this topic, please consider reading The discontented little baby book.

What is paced bottle feeding?

Many families find they would like to know how to use a bottle in a way that is best for their baby and which feels as close to breastfeeding as possible. We call this approach ‘paced bottle feeding’.

We recommend feeding by 'cued care' – that is, babies are offered the bottle whenever they seem to want milk, and only until they communicate or cue they are full. In general, older healthy infants will cue for feeds every few hours. Newborns and young infants vary in their needs, typically up to twelve times or more daily, and we need to be flexible when responding to their cues. Being flexible means offering the bottle at any time and place that works for you and your baby.

This will mean that your baby will probably take different amounts at each feed. Notice total daily amounts over a week or two if your baby is only formula fed, to make sure that overall these amounts are not too large, rather than aiming for a set amount for each feed.

We recommend using a simple narrow neck teat, which works best for most babies. The wide-necked teats do not better imitate the breast, despite what you might hear, and sometimes cause problems!

Acknowledgements

These pages on bottle feeding in the Brief & simple summary of When baby cries a lot were co-written with Renee Keogh RN IBCLC, Founding NDC Educator.

I'm grateful to Professor Sophie Havighurst, Ros June, and Caroline Ma at Mindful, The University of Melbourne, for their feedback on the articles and videos in When baby cries a lot in the first few months of life. They helped me keep the language plain and the concepts as accessible as possible, for this brief and simple version of the Possums 5-domain approach to the crying baby.

Recommended resources

Your baby's position when bottle feeding

Following your baby's cues for bottle feeds

Building a positive relationship with food through paced bottle feeding

When does a baby have conditioned dialling up with the bottle and what to do about it?