Name: radhika88

For a baby it’s a big task initially to hold the milk bottle & guide it to her mouth. The best way to know if she is ready for the bottle is to hand her a bottle & see where it goes from there.



Holding the milk-bottle and sucking from it is a skill which the baby can develop as early as at the age of six months or as late as a year. There is a huge disparity in the ages when different children start taking feed from the bottle.

If your baby has developed the motor skills required to put the bottle to her mouth then you can offer her a bottle every now and then to make her used to it. This should be usually done at the age of six months as by this time babies start the process of self-regulating their feed.

Points to remember before letting your baby take command of the bottle:

Never force-feed the baby through the bottle, it can lead to over-feeding or may cause choking.
Never let the baby go to sleep with the bottle in her mouth, the residual milk/formula can cause oral infections, tooth decay or choking.
For the first few months never leave the baby unsupervised during the feeding time.
Propped bottles can cause the milk to flow from their mouth to their ears, where it may pool and cause ear-infections. Propped bottles are never a good idea, instead hold the bottle yourself and enjoy some quality-time bonding with your baby.

Whenever the day comes, when a baby starts holding the bottle on her own, it comes as a huge relief to the parents as they have some more time on their hands which would have otherwise been spent on feeding the baby.

Happy Parenting.

Subscribe to this conversation Reply Anonymously