Moving from breast to bottle – Munchkin LATCH review

Boobs are useful. Especially when Little B is rooting around in the middle of the night and I am so tired I can barely think straight.

But there’s no denying that they are rather attached to me. And that’s not so useful if I want to be somewhere that Little B isn’t. Like on a rare night out with the Other Half to celebrate that we’ve managed to stick together for 7 years!

I’m lucky that for me, pumping breastmilk isn’t really a problem, but of course that’s only half the issue. Once it’s out and ready I’ve still got to find a way for Little B to drink it that she is happy with – and from past experience I know that isn’t always as straightforward as it sounds.

Munchkin LATCH bottles offer a teat which moves with your baby, to help mimic a continuous latch and reduce the symptoms of colic. In addition to that, it has an anti-colic valve in the bottom to prevent any air bubbles travelling through the milk. And the teat works on a pressure system, so that the suckling motion required is more like breastfeeding.

Good in theory. So I decided to have a ‘trial run’ in practice to see what Little B thought about it all.

The bottle comes apart in four sections (bottle, teat, rim and lid) and fit easily into our microwave steam steriliser. Fitting them back together again was simple, although I did need to fiddle a bit to make sure that all the ridged bits of the teat were totally pushed through so that the seal was right.

And then it was over to the Other Half…

I tried to stay out of the way a bit, because I thought Little B might react better to receiving milk from someone else if she couldn’t see me hanging around. But even from my vantage point peeping through the gap in the doorway, I could see that she was feeding happily. Although she was initially confused by the bottle, she soon ‘latched’ on to it and we were able to see the teat moving as she manipulated the milk out.

I used a size 1 teat initially (with size 2 on standby) as I wasn’t sure how the teat mimics breastfeeding in terms of effort – although I did want her to be able to get milk out I didn’t want to make it too easy for her as we don’t plan to be switching to bottles completely! This did in fact result in the nipple of the teat inverting a bit a couple of times – not that Little B seemed bothered and the milk was still flowing; but I might give the size 2 a go next time and see how that compares. Although it was reasonably slow going, she definitely was getting milk and there was no enraged squealing going on of the type I know well when I’m not moving as quickly as she’d like on some occasions.

Fifteen minutes later, and the milk was half gone.

Little B was smiling, and so were we – the night out which previously seemed fairly unlikely had just become a distinct possibility.

I’m always a bit dubious when bottles claim to be breasts, but on this occasion the design seems to really work well – and as long as Little B is happy, then I am too 😀