A Bottle is for Formula Only

Listen to the article

A bottle is for formula only. Formula contains the right amount of nutrients for a healthy baby including iron. This is what a baby needs for the first year of life, especially the first four months when that is the basic food for an infant.

Babies don’t need extra water. They get all the water they need in their breast milk and formula. Babies can actually get too much water and develop an illness called "water intoxication." When in this condition, a baby will sleep more than usual, be hard to wake up, or even have seizures. Although not as serious, but still of concern, too much liquid can fill your infant’s stomach and reduce the appetite for the amount of breast milk or formula needed. Never add sugar, honey, or carbonated beverages to water to get an infant to drink more.

Even nutritious liquids such as juice should not be served in a bottle. When a baby is old enough to try juice, the baby is also old enough to begin learning how to drink from a cup. This is how babies learn to develop their motor skills. You might think they are not getting very much juice this way, but they really don’t need very much at this age. As before, too much liquid can interfere in the appetite for milk.

A baby needs breast milk or formula for a full year, so when the baby is ready for cow’s milk, he or she is also ready to drink milk from a cup. By this time, your baby receives more of his or her nourishment from solid food and the volume of milk needed is greatly reduced. If they have been drinking juice from a cup, they are ready to drink their milk the same way.

Cereal and baby food are too thick for a bottle and should never be served in one. Cutting a bigger whole in the end to accommodate is not a safe thing to do.

Infants get no food value from tea, cola, kool-aid and other flavored beverages and they should of course not be put in your baby’s bottle. Infants have small stomachs and can consume very little food and drink. Make sure what they do eat and drink is nutritious so they can get as many nutrients as possible.

It is a good idea to gradually decrease use of bottles as your baby gets close to one year of age. Toddlers who carry bottles around all day are good candidates for tooth decay from sugars being on the teeth too long.

Karen Elliot, ElliottK@missouri.edu
Regional Specialist, Nutrition and Health Education
Jackson County, Missouri
University of Missouri Extension