As a speech-language pathologist and certified lactation counselor, I've encountered many different challenges that infants face with feeding. Each child has presented with their own unique set of needs, and I'm always on the lookout for different tools and strategies to add to my clinical toolbox. This led me to mōmi, a bottle designed to mimic natural breastfeeding mechanics. This blog post is a personal account of both my observations of the mōmi as a professional and my own experience as a mother.

discovering the mōmi bottle

I discovered mōmi at a crucial time after the birth of my baby. My daughter was born with a pronounced anterior tongue tie which prevented her from maintaining a deep latch at the breast. After her laser frenectomy, I worked with her to establish proper tongue range of motion and suck strength for efficient breastfeeding.

Due to an unexpected postpartum infection, I was forced to rely on exclusive bottle feeding for a while. Following my course of antibiotics, my daughter started showing a preference for the conventional bottle over breastfeeding. However, I wanted the option and flexibility to both breast and bottle feed, especially as I got ready to head back to work. I was anxious to find a solution that would sustain our breastfeeding relationship. Thankfully, the mōmi bottle offered that solution, with its unique design that requires active suction and compression to feed.

why the mōmi bottle stands out

• Active Feeding Mechanism: Unlike conventional bottles that allow milk to flow with little effort from the baby, the mōmi bottle requires active sucking. Milk will not flow unless the baby is engaging their tongue and cheeks to draw milk from the nipple. Babies cannot express the milk by merely biting and compressing the nipple. This design helped my baby practice and exercise her oral facial muscles, closely mimicking the oral mechanics of breastfeeding.
• Simulates Breastfeeding: With a new design created in collaboration with lactation professionals, the mōmi nipple is shaped to promote a deep latch and allow babies to use their entire tongue for expressing milk as they do when nursing. Just like with a mom's breast, the mōmi nipple is drawn to the back of babies' mouths. This has helped my baby tremendously with transitioning between bottle and breast. Unfortunately, many conventional nipples on the market that advertise as looking like a mother’s breast, actually promote babies to suck only with the anterior portion of their tongues.
• Controlled Milk Flow: The controlled flow of the mōmi bottle means that my baby has to work to feed and can naturally pace herself, just as she does when breastfeeding. With the conventional nipple, when my baby swallowed, the negative pressure within her mouth allowed milk to flow freely from the bottle. This often overwhelmed her, resulting in her gasping for air and swallowing excessive air along with the milk.

integrating the mōmi bottle into professional practice

The mōmi bottle is an exciting addition into my therapeutic toolkit because of its potential to:

• Enhance suck training: Unlike traditional tools used for suck training, mōmi trains babies with paced nutritive sucking.
• Promote oral motor skills: As compression on the nipple stops the flow of milk, mōmi encourages babies to develop the suck strength and coordination needed for effective feeding.
• Educate parents: mōmi can be used to help parents practice therapeutic paced feeding at home. This helps them support their child’s feeding progress while reinforcing skills learned in therapy.

the game-changing benefits of the mōmi bottle

From a clinical perspective, the mōmi bottle is a game changer. It supports babies’ oral motor development, helping to teach appropriate tongue placement and movement for effective sucking. It has the potential to help babies with weak oral/pharyngeal muscles to develop their suck-swallow-breathe strength and coordination using a slow and paced flow. It is also a bottle that, in my experience, most closely aligns with the biomechanics of nursing. It’s tremendous to have this option for women with ongoing breastfeeding goals who want or need to introduce a bottle.

conclusion

Embracing innovative tools like the mōmi bottle can transform how we address many feeding challenges while helping moms meet their breastfeeding goals. Speaking from my own experience, the mōmi bottle has helped to protect the breastfeeding relationship I have with my daughter while preventing nipple preference for bottle feeding. As I return to my work after maternity leave, I am eager to enrich my practice with this tool to teach and reinforce healthy feeding behaviors with my patients. I am also excited to share my experiences with the mōmi bottle with fellow speech-language pathologists and lactation professionals. I hope my insights encourage more professionals to explore how this bottle can be integrated into their practices, benefiting feeding for parents and oral-motor development for babies.

Joanne Rogers, CCC-SLP, CLC, is a licensed speech and language pathologist and certified lactation counselor with expertise in both infant feeding and communication disorders. She's a mom of two herself, and serves families in Fairfield County, CT.