How to know if baby needs a faster flowrate on the bottle teat?
A baby should take as long to feed with a bottle as they would breastfeeding. So about 20-30 minutes, approximately.
For the Nuk Latex Teats that we sell here at Breastmates: the easiest way to determine what size hole to use with a bottle teat, is by what the bottle contains. If it is breastmilk or water, then the liquid is thin and should be a small hole. Formula is slightly thicker, so should be a medium hole and only very seldom should they need a large hole, which is only really for thickened formula, medicine, or pulpy juices.
If you use this as the guide and baby is taking 20 to 30 minutes to feed, then they are using the correct hole size. Only if the baby is taking much longer to feed, should parents change to a bigger hole size.
“Flow rate” isn’t used, as in theory the flow rate should be virtually the same if they are feeding breast milk with a small hole or formula with a medium hole. The whole time the feed is working the jaw muscles, so if the feed is too fast they are not working their jaw muscles correctly. This is important for starting to eat solids, speech, etc.
