Mother bottle feeding baby

Understanding Baby Feeding Behaviours: Fidgeting, Pausing and Refusal

Feeding can be confusing, especially if your baby has recently refused feeds or you are worried about causing pressure. Many babies move, fidget, pause, or play while feeding  and these behaviours are often completely normal.

In this article, I explain common feeding behaviours babies display, how to tell the difference between playful fidgeting and genuine rejection, and how to respond in a way that supports relaxed, pressure-free feeding.

Key Points
  • Many movements and pauses during feeds are normal and developmentally appropriate
  • Fidgeting is often playful; rejection is usually tense and disengaged
  • How you respond matters more than the behaviour itself
  • Stopping or pausing a feed when unsure helps prevent pressure

Normal baby feeding behaviors

As a newborn, your baby has limited ability to deliberately move his limbs. However, he can easily startle. As he matures, and develops physically, intellectually, and emotionally, he will become increasingly more active while feeding. He will start to behave in ways that he has never done before.

Examples of normal infant behavior that you might observe your baby perform while feeding include:

  • Pounding or bouncing his legs up and down
  • Grabbing his foot
  • Staring and/or smiling at you
  • Tapping or trying to hold the bottle
  • Grabbing and pulling on your finger of the hand holding the bottle
  • Accidentally knocking the bottle out of his mouth
  • Deliberately pulling the bottle out of his mouth, looking at it, returning it to his mouth, and repeat
  • Sitting up or doing tummy crunches
  • Stretching his arms or legs
  • Leaving the nipple in his mouth without sucking
  • Pausing and sucking again
  • Vocalizing, babbling, or making humming sounds
  • Blowing raspberries
  • Trying to stick his thumb or finger in his mouth while the nipple is still in his mouth.
  • Covering his eyes with his arms or the burp cloth
  • Pulling his ears or hair
  • Pulling your hair
  • Pushing the nipple out with his tongue or hands
  • Turning his head and/or body away

The type of behaviors would largely depend on your baby’s stage of development. Mostly, babies employ these behaviors to amuse themselves while feeding. Depending on their temperament type some babies are more inquisitive, more active, and more easily distracted compared to others. Some of these behaviours may also occur when a baby is feeling agitated or wants to stop feeding. Hence, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between your baby fidgeting or rejecting.

Fidgeting versus rejection

Fidgeting  Rejection
Relaxed, playful mood. Appears tense or agitated.
Willing to briefly engage in eye contact. Avoids eye contact.
Settles with attention. Becomes more agitated with attention.
Turns head to look around.

 Turns head to distance himself from the bottle.

What to do when your baby fidgets during feeds

If there are no signs of tension, it’s fine to continue the feed.

  1. Make sure the nipple flow rate is suitable for your baby’s stage of development. If the nipple is too slow this will increase the duration of the feed and the risk that your baby will get bored.
  2. Look at your baby.
  3. Speak to him or sing.
  4. Provide something to maintain baby’s attention while feeding. For example, place a toy in his hand or on his chest, or wear colored beads around your neck which he can touch while feeding.

Gauge how your baby responds. Ask yourself if what you are doing is helping him to stay focused on feeding or distracting him away from eating?

NOTE: If you feel you need to go to great lengths to entertain your baby to keep him eating, consider if you might be doing too much.There is a point where encouraging a baby to eat becomes pressure to eat. Crossing that line can trigger or reinforce a feeding aversion (see feeding aversion: why babies refuse feeds despite hunger).

What to do if your baby rejects feeding

If your baby shows clear signs of rejection, pause or end the feed. If you are unsure, taking a short break is often the safest option.

Your baby may not be particularly hungry at that moment. Hunger provides motivation to feed, and many babies feed better after a break. If your baby continues to reject the feed, end it and try again later.

Responding calmly and respectfully to your baby’s cues helps build trust around feeding and reduces the risk of pressure-related feeding problems.

By Rowena Bennett

How Baby Care Advice can help

If your baby is showing signs of a feeding aversion, you do not have to navigate it alone. Our resources are based on Rowena Bennett’s decades of clinical experience helping thousands of families worldwide.

About Rowena

Rowena Bennett (RN, RM, CHN, MHN, IBCLC) is a leading infant-feeding and sleep specialist and author of several books on infant feeding and behaviour, including the widely acclaimed “Your Baby’s Bottle-Feeding Aversion: Reasons & Solutions.” With over three decades of clinical experience across child health, midwifery, mental health, and lactation, she has helped thousands of families worldwide understand and resolve complex feeding challenges through her evidence-based, baby-led approaches.

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