I've solely breastfed my son for 6 months and now I've started weaning I thought I'd try him on some follow-on milk while I start to scale down the breastfeeds. My husband also wants to be in on the feeding. However our son refuses to latch on to bottles or beakers, preferring to chew them and not to suck, he then gets distressed and I end up breastfeeding. (I also think he's teething but there are no teeth showing yet).
The other 9 mums in my NCT group are all bottle or mixed feeding now, and have been for some time, so have I scuppered things? I haven't expressed too often because I can have a bit too much milk, and we were also told in our NCT class that we would ruin breastfeeding if we tried to bottle feed expressed milk too early, so we didn't.
Every time I see a health professional I get a big (rather patronising) pat on the back for continuing to breastfeed, but I would like to scale down and stop in the next few months as I want to get back to work and have the odd bit of time to myself - hope that doesn't sound too selfish. It's not even an option at the moment.
Should I just keep breastfeeding and not bother with follow-on milk and/or trying to use a bottle or beaker? Will he be ready for a bottle or beaker when he's older? Will I still be breastfeeding him at the school gates!?!
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Infant feeding
6 Month Old Breastfed Baby Refusing Bottle & Beaker
Passthehobnobs · 13/07/2011 15:41
It takes a while for a breastfed baby to learn the skills required for drinking from a beaker so don't expect it to happen overnight! However despite knowing this I still got panicky about getting DS2 to take milk from something other than me. 
I had the most success by just persisting with two types of cup - I use one like this for milk:
//www.tommeetippee.co.uk/product/trainer/
and the basic tommee tippee free-flow beaker for water, although I'll switch to that for milk too once DS2 gets the hang of drinking from it without having to stop, turn it over, shake it a bit, chew the bottom of the cup... 
I found that the beaker with the soft silicone top worked well for milk as it's not completely free-flowing so DS2 didn't choke and splutter on it so much to start and he liked chewing on it to begin with so would get a little bit of milk and eventually worked it out. He can't hold it completely by himself (they do also do a beaker with handles with the same top) but I prefer that at the moment anyway!
You probably will get more success using EBM as then your DS is just learning a new skill, rather than getting used to a new taste as well. If you can manage it then combining BF and EBM in a cup/beaker until you can start to introduce cow's milk (I started giving small amounts before 12 months to get my DS1 used to it and will probably do the same with DS2) is a good way to go. However if you want to stop BF sooner and don't want to express for that long then mixing formula with EBM, increasing the amounts til it's just formula, has worked for friends of mine.
Your DS will figure it out eventually! 
Oh and I should add that I spent loads on various different types of bottles, beakers and cups before realising I was just confusing DS2 with all the new and intersting "toys" I was offering him to play with, bang on the highchair tray, drop on the floor...
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