Feeding your baby should be a calming and nurturing experience. But when your baby’s meals regularly include fussiness, choking, limited intake, or refusal, it is natural to be concerned. After all, why would something as essential as feeding feel so difficult for them? The good news is there are gentle strategies you can try to help your baby feed more comfortably. Additional support is available from feeding therapists who can help your baby build strong feeding skills and bring enjoyment back to mealtimes.
What Are Feeding Difficulties?
When feeding is difficult for your baby, meals become tiring and stressful, and your baby may not take in enough milk to feel satisfied. Some infants have trouble finding or maintaining a latch, coordinating sucking and swallowing, or staying calm during a feeding. Others start eagerly but lose stamina, or become unsettled and overwhelmed as the feeding continues. Many feeding challenges begin slowly. Parents may brush off a tough feeding as a bad moment, only to notice the same issues appearing again during later feeds.
Common Reasons for Feeding Difficulties
Feeding challenges may stem from a variety of causes, including:
- Lip or tongue ties: Limited lip or tongue mobility may interfere with sealing, sucking, or effectively transferring milk.
- Muscle tension or weakness: Tight or weak jaw, cheek, or tongue muscles may make feeding tiring and limit how long an infant can sustain sucking.
- Reflux or gas discomfort: Discomfort from reflux or gas may cause infants to shorten feeds, pause frequently, or cry while feeding.
- Prematurity or early medical care: Premature birth, time spent in the NICU, or early breathing or feeding interventions may reduce opportunities to practice the suck–swallow–breathe rhythm, which can make feeding more effortful at first.
- Developmental differences: Feeding skills mature at different paces, and this may affect oral coordination, breathing rhythm, or endurance.
- Flow or latch challenges: Flow that is too fast or too slow, or difficulty maintaining a secure latch, may increase the effort required during feeding.
- Sensory sensitivities: Strong reactions to taste, temperature, nipple shape, or the sensation of milk in the mouth may overwhelm some infants during feeds.
Signs of Feeding Difficulties in Babies
Feeding difficulties can show up in different ways depending on the child, but common signs include:
- Tensing up or pulling away when the bottle or breast comes near
- Struggling to find or maintain a comfortable latch
- Sucking in short bursts then stopping suddenly
- Losing interest in feeding even when they seem hungry
- Dribbling milk frequently
- Getting distracted during feeding
- Remaining hungry even after feeding for a long period of time
- Becoming tearful, tense, or overwhelmed around mealtimes
- Feeding only when drowsy or half-asleep
Ways to Support Your Baby at Home
Noticing how your baby responds during meals can help you adjust the environment, position, or rhythm so feeding feels less effortful. Ways to do this include:
- Creating a calm feeding environment: A quieter space with softer lighting and fewer visual distractions helps your baby focus on feeding instead of reacting to everything around them.
- Watching how your baby responds during meals: Gulping sounds, wide eyes, or frequent pauses can signal that feeding is becoming hard work.
- Offering shorter, more frequent feeds: Smaller meals spread throughout the day help babies who tire easily manage feeding without becoming overwhelmed.
- Supporting your baby’s body, not just their mouth: A gently supported head, shoulders, and trunk in a slightly upright position helps your baby swallow with less effort.
- Following your baby’s pace: When your baby turns away, seals their lips, tenses their body, or cries, they may be telling you they’ve had enough. Respect their signal, pause the feeding, and try again only when they are calm.
If feeding continues to feel stressful or effortful, a pediatric feeding therapist can help you understand what is happening and offer strategies that support your baby’s feeding progress.
How Feeding Therapy Helps Babies With Feeding Difficulties
Feeding therapy for babies focuses on helping them feel more comfortable and capable during meals by building and strengthening the oral motor foundations needed for safe, effective feeding.
Treatment starts with an evaluation where the therapist listens to your concerns, observes how your baby feeds, and looks at how the lips, tongue, cheeks, and jaw work together with posture, breathing, and sensory responses. These observations help identify where feeding becomes difficult and what skills may need support.
From there, the therapist creates a customized plan that meets your baby at their developmental level and helps feeding feel more manageable.
What Feeding Therapy for Babies May Look Like
Feeding therapy sessions are gentle, supportive, and paced to match your baby’s comfort. Therapists use positioning, pacing, and simple, playful interactions to help feeding feel easier while encouraging steady skill-building. Parents and caregivers are involved throughout the process, receiving guidance and practical tips you can confidently use at home.
Feeding therapy may include:
- Showing you positions that help your baby stay relaxed and comfortable
- Suggesting bottle or nipple options that support your baby’s feeding rhythm and reduce effort
- Offering strategies to reduce fatigue, gagging, or frequent pauses
- Helping you adjust feeding techniques so your baby does not have to work as hard
- Teaching pacing techniques that support calmer meals
- Teaching you how to read and respond to your baby’s feeding cues
- Guiding your baby as they build oral motor and coordination skills step by step
With time and gentle support, your baby can feel more comfortable feeding and begin to approach meals with greater confidence and ease.
Contact Building Futures for Help
If you live near the Monroe or Ruston, LA, areas, and your child is experiencing feeding difficulties and needs extra support, Building Futures can help. Call one of our locations or fill out our online form and one of our feeding therapists will contact you to schedule an evaluation. We look forward to helping your baby develop stronger feeding skills so they can enjoy meals and get the nutrition they need to grow and thrive.
