Building a positive relationship with food through 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.
While it is tempting to ‘encourage’ your baby to finish a bottle, it's more important to follow their cues. You want your baby's appetite to regulate how much they take. To avoid waste, you may like to offer smaller volumes at the start and top up if your baby is looking for more.
It’s also important, when you can, to make bottle feeding a time when you are available to interact with and enjoy your baby. This is the beginning of your baby’s life-long healthy relationship with food, so mealtimes are never about being pressured to eat, but are about social connection, feeling satisfied, and enjoyment.
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
When does a baby have conditioned dialling up with the bottle and what to do about it?