How to Teach Your Baby to Eat from a Pouch

Note: This blog is not medical advice and is for informational purposes only. For any specific recommendations or concerns, please refer to your child’s healthcare provider.

For parents of young children, pouches can be a lifesaver—especially once your little one can feed themselves. Once they’ve got a handle on this developmental skill, pouches can be the perfect snack, packing a lot of nutrition and tasty flavor in an easy, grab-and-go form.

When can babies try self-feeding from a pouch?

Feeding specialist Melanie Potock, MA, CCC-SLP says, “From a fine and gross motor perspective, babies can learn to self-feed from a pouch at about seven months of age.” Prior to that, parents and caregivers can help assist by offering the pouch contents via a preloaded spoon, a clean finger, or by squirting some on the highchair table and letting your baby explore and bring the purée to their mouth. As Potock tells us, these methods have a common theme: “They teach baby to transfer their ability to suck from a breast or bottle to eating complementary or solid foods.”

What skills do babies need before self-feeding from a pouch?

Sucking is a prerequisite for eating from a pouch (it’s also key for babies learning to suck from a straw and safely chew foods). “As feeding skills progress,” Potock notes, your “baby will use this intraoral pressure (interior sucking pressure) to move food around in their mouth as the tongue pushes it onto the gums and teeth for chewing and eventually, for swallowing.” These skills are essential to the process of learning to eat all kinds of foods.

How can parents help encourage the development of these skills?

Here are a few tips for helping your baby intentionally suck from a spoon or finger, the prerequisite skill for self-feeding from a pouch:

Serving Size

Start with a small dot of purée, then add more each time the food is offered. Do this until the spoon or fingertip is covered (this is only necessary with the first few attempts). “The key is to read your baby’s cues and let them tell you if it’s too much volume to manage at first,” says Potock. “Surprised faces, squinting, and gentle shaking of the head are all part of the fun, but may also indicate that they need tiny tastes at first until their sensory system adjusts to the new sensation.”

Additionally, pick a spoon small enough to fit comfortably into your baby’s mouth. “A spoon with a small, relatively flat ‘bowl’ is ideal and the caregiver’s pinky finger works best,” notes Potock. “Try flipping that finger over, so that the nail bed lies on baby’s tongue and keep the finger straight, yet relaxed so that baby’s lips and tongue can grasp and suck.”

Go Slow

Offer the purée on a spoon or finger, then pause before removing it from your baby’s mouth, which will cause them to begin sucking. Then, Potock says, “Pull (spoon or finger) straight out, not upward, to help baby initiate the sucking pattern. Once baby has learned to suck from a spoon or finger, they are ready to learn to suck puree off the spout of the pouch.”

You can do this by holding the pouch and gently squeeze a little bit of purée onto the spout. Offer the spout to the baby’s mouth, pausing and allowing them time to close their lips around the spout and suck. “The purée on the outside of the spout is what cues baby to suck,” explains Potock, “and they will also get a bit more puree from the pouch itself.” Let your baby take the lead here. While it may be tempting to help them out, Potock suggests not squeezing the pouch, as your baby may not be ready for more volume just yet.

Try a Pouch Cooler

At about seven months of age, Potock suggests introducing a Pouch Cooler to help your baby grasp and hold the pouch on their own. “The cooler does not have to be chilled for this purpose,” she notes, “but offers a soft edge for baby to grasp without squeezing the contents of the pouch too hard.”

Potock suggests squeezing a little purée onto the spout, as this will cue your baby to suck, rather than bite, the spout. “At this age, babies still have a bite reflex, which is easily stimulated by anything entering their mouth, like a finger, spoon or spout.” By around nine months, they will learn to control this and to bite intentionally. By about eight months of age, Potock says, many babies are sucking from a pouch independently (but under adult supervision, of course).

What other tools/products can help with pouch feeding?

Like our Pouch Coolers, plastic pouch holders with handles can help babies hold their pouch and bring the spout to their lips. Be sure to squeeze some of the purée onto the spout as well.

Once babies have the bite reflex down, ChooMee SoftSips can be a great mess-prevention tool, as they are designed to eliminate the oh-so familiar pouch purée explosions.

What To Do if Self-Feeding Isn’t Going as Expected

Like all things parenting, learning how to eat and self-feed is a process. Potock says, “Babies and toddlers learn to eat a variety of foods by relying on a sequence of fine and gross motor skills, reflexes, and more.” However, Potock explains there are some circumstances where your baby may benefit from a pediatric feeding evaluation. These include:

1. Baby is not accepting solids by seven months old.
2. Baby is experiencing excessive gagging when attempting to eat safe solids or has one choking episode. As Potock says, “Occasional gagging that is not distressing to baby is to be expected. Any true choking episode should always be reported to the pediatrician.”
3. Baby has not progressed past purees to another safe solid by the end of month eight.
4. Baby has a limited variety of taste preferences and/or demonstrates a strong preference for one or two textures at eight months old.
5. Baby is unable to sit independently for short periods of time, is unable to bring hands to mouth when starting solids, or appears significantly distressed when attempting to try solid foods at six months old.
   

Feeding your little one and helping them learn to feed themselves can be great fun, but it’s a lot of work. Be patient, listen to your baby, and trust in the progress. You’ve got this!