Bottle Nipple Sizes

There is only one size nipple on a breast, they don't change. I really believe bottle companies just do that to make more money. It never did make sense to me to change nipples, when breastfed babies only have one from the beginning! (well, two...you get what I'm saying.)

Long story short, we never went past slow flow with my son. He was happy with it and exclusively bottle fed.

If you exclusively breastfeed, continuing to use the slow flow best mimics the work required to get your milk to let down and then the suction rate required to keep it going.

I tried both born free and dr. brown's with my kids. Well, I bought Born Free because I followed the advice you should use a nipple that is wider at the base to mimic the breast. However, my daughter wouldn't use them. Upon trying the Dr. Brown's, she was much happier. With my 2nd, we tried the BF again, just to see if he'd use them (as we had a whole set that we'd never used), and he seemed uninterested as well. But with the DB, he ate just fine. I figured out that the DB must more closely mimic my nipple shape. So, that is what I would consider. As far as the flow, definitely start slow, but if your baby is sucking well, but not much seems to be getting in (and maybe then your baby gets frustrated), try the next flow up. Also, BF has a variable flow that adjusts to the baby's suck strength, though I'm not sure it's recommended for young babies.

We stuck with the Dr. Brown's 'Level 1' nipples (that's the size that came with our bottles). We used that until we weaned off the bottle. I know some brands call it 'Slow Flow." Never saw a reason to switch, though we did buy more after a few months. They did begin to show wear and tear.

I never went up past slow flow with my breastfed baby.

We fed our daughter breast milk exclusively as well. We never switched to the faster flow nipples, just stayed with the ones that came with the bottles (I think they were labelled 1's). I asked some of my girlfriends about it at the time who also breastfed their little ones. Some of them had really high flow rates when they were nursing, but they all stayed with the slow flow nipples when using bottles, regardless of bottle brand. Apparently there is some concern if you switch to a faster (i.e., easier) bottle nipple the baby can become lazy, making it difficult or discouraging to nurse. I don't know if there is any truth to that. But we stayed with the slowest nipples through weaning. For reference, I nursed her until she was about 18 months, but I stopped pumping/bottles somewhere between a year and 18 months.

BF babies tend to like the fat soft nipples. try to match the flow with what yours is like. reg for "easy milk-maker", fast for "swirter/ firehose", and slow for "jaw-strainig milk-maker"

good luck :)

It really depends on the child.

My first went to level 2 at about 3 months then level 3 at 6 months.

I tried the same thing with my second but he could not handle the level 2 so early, and he didn't even go to level 2 until 6 months and we never even used the level 3s with him because the milk just came out too fast for him.