Newborn bottle feeding issues - clicking and struggling to find the right bottle/flow (4 week old) + worried about possible tongue tie

Bottles / Feeding Gear / Equipment 🍼

Hi everyone,
I’m a first-time mum and I’m starting to worry a bit about a possible tongue tie because my 4 week old baby is having ongoing bottle feeding issues. I’d really appreciate any advice or similar experiences.

She also takes BIBS dummies, which she seems to manage fine (not sure if that’s relevant for tongue tie or not), but feeding with bottles has been quite inconsistent and stressful.

My baby is on expressed breast milk/formula and I’ve been trying different bottles, but I can’t seem to find the right fit.
We’ve tried several already:
Philips Avent (size 3 teat): Today she was making a lot of clicking sounds with this. At one point she got tired and fell asleep mid-feed. Another feed she became very frustrated, grabbed the bottle, tried to pull it toward herself, and cried.
MAM (size 0 teat): The clicking mostly stopped, but I noticed milk leaking from her mouth and she made a few choking/gagging-type sounds.
Lansinoh (size S teat): this felt too fast for her as well.
Tommee Tippee Natural Start: she didn’t really seem to like this one.

We kept switching between Avent and MAM — with Avent she clicks a lot and feeds take a long time, but with MAM the milk seems to flow too quickly and she struggles to manage it, with leakage and occasional choking-type sounds.

Feeds are usually taking over 30 minutes with Avent, and overall it feels like we can’t find a middle ground — either she seems to work too hard or gets overwhelmed by flow.
She has good wet nappies overall, but feeding still feels quite stressful and I’m not sure if this is:
a bottle/teat flow issue,
normal newborn feeding coordination,
or possibly a tongue tie.

Has anyone experienced something similar with their newborn? Did you find a bottle/teat that worked better, or did it turn out to be feeding technique or tongue tie related?
Any advice would be really appreciated.

Posted Jul 6, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

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