One of the most unexpected experiences of being a parent has been feeding the baby. Never in a thousand years could I have imagined the complexity of it all. Complex does not necessarily mean difficult, but it does mean it requires planning, time, and lots of patience. Below you will find my experience, which is, of course, very particular so I do not expect that it applies to anyone else. My goal with this entry is just to illustrate what makes introducing bottle feeding to your baby complex.

The first thing to say is that my wife could breastfeed relatively easily. There is a period of adjustment from birth until the baby is finally able to be breastfed, and as with almost everything those first days, that transition is stressful. The main reason why it is stressful is because you have no assurance that your wife will be able to breastfeed. This made it really hard because there was no clear and defined point in time where we could give up on breastfeeding, so we suffered the tension of wanting to do it the natural way and not causing the baby harm by not giving her the food she needed. We succeeded in the end, for which we are thankful, but it was tough.

For that transition from birth until your wife is breastfeeding, I suggest you look for more specialized sources with more experience than just the anecdotal one of having gone through it once, which is what I could offer. It is a very emotional time, and since for us it went relatively smoothly, I do not think I have any relevant experience that I could share without oversimplifying the process.

For the transition from breastfeeding to bottle feeding I do think it is worth sharing my experience with the hope that it will help any new parent out there reading this understand the layers of complexity the process might have. As everything I have written before in this blog, what you will read below is what I would have liked to know before going through the process with my wife and my daughter.

The first thing worth mentioning is that this second transition is still very emotional, especially for the mother. But, since you will go through it most likely when the baby is months old, it is less stressful. This means that you, as a parent, already have some months of experience under your belt in your new role and that the baby no longer looks and feels as fragile as they do those first days after birth. In that sense, it is easier than the transition to breastfeeding because you do not feel that time is against you.

This is also something worth keeping in mind because it is a double-edged sword. Transitioning from exclusively breastfeeding to introducing bottle feeding is a process that takes time. This was the first surprising thing for me. I never thought a hungry baby could refuse food! So, my first recommendation is to plan to introduce the bottle with lots of time. I do not know if anyone could give an estimate of how long it normally takes, but as a reference, it took us around six weeks.

Now, to make it easy to understand, below is a non-exhaustive list of the variables to consider when introducing the bottle, which are the ones that my wife and I had to change to get our daughter to finally take the bottle:

• Whether bottle feeding will replace breastfeeding or complement it;
• What is the content of the bottle, meaning what will your baby eat;
• Type of nipple of the bottle
• The person feeding the baby; and
• Temperature of the content of the bottle.

The first variable is completely dependent on you, the parents. In our case, our intention was to complement breastfeeding, not replace it. Our daughter spends one day a week with each of the grandmothers at their homes. Because of this, the baby had to be bottle-fed relatively early, even if my wife continued to breastfeed.

Like with the transition from birth to breastfeeding, there are more specialized sources with more experience on how to introduce bottle feeding without disrupting breastfeeding, which I recommend you search for. My only intention in bringing it up here is for you to be aware that bottle feeding can, in some cases, have such an effect and that you should account for it if your wife’s intention is to continue to breastfeed.

The next element to consider is what you give your baby to eat with the bottle. In our case, we did not find out that this was even a variable that could impact the process until my wife decided that she wanted to stop breastfeeding. We had overcome the problems with bottle feeding our baby, until we changed the bottle’s content from breastmilk to formula. We had to try three different types of formula before finally finding the one our daughter liked. Even if we learned that this too is a variable last from a chronological point of view, what you feed your baby is so determinant that I think it is worth mentioning before the next ones.

We learned about the following three variables when our daughter unexpectedly decided to start refusing the bottle around four months old. She had been eating from it since she was two weeks old, more or less, when we gave it to her for the first time when my wife had to go to her doctor’s office for a postpartum check-up. For the first four months after that, we sporadically bottle-fed our daughter breast milk without any inconvenience. Then, suddenly, one day, she decided she did not want it anymore.

It was then, through research and advice from people close to us, that we decided to buy a bottle with a different nipple. The third one was the charm, and she retook the bottle. With that new nipple we tried, it was as though a wall had been torn down, and our daughter accepted the possibility of the bottle again, even with the original nipples that she suddenly rejected before. She still was not as willing as she had been before the refusal when she was four months old, so sometimes we had to continue varying things until she would take it.

Those things were the person feeding her and the temperature of the content of the bottle. Regarding the person who would feed her, the nanny was the one who more easily managed to bottle-feed her. After the nanny came yours truly, the father. Grandmothers also tried with sufficient success. The one who could not bottle-feed her while she was still breastfeeding was my wife. The baby would simply not take the bottle with her, which our pediatrician said was because she smelled her and associated the smell with breastfeeding. We also realized that the temperature of the milk in the bottle made it easier for her to take the bottle. Our daughter preferred the milk lukewarm as opposed to hot.

My hope is that the summary of our experience will shed light on the complexities of bottle-feeding a baby and all the variables that go into play. The critical thing is to be patient and understanding. There is simply no way to force a baby to eat. Knowing from the get-go that it will take some time and that you will probably need to try lots of different things will hopefully reduce the frustration and stress of those initial failures until you find the right balance between all the elements your baby likes.