Baby won't take a bottle

[Katiesjm26]

My daughter is 5 months old and I've exclusively breastfed her so far. I am very happy I have managed to do this but now I really want to get her on to a bottle so my partner can share the feeds however she just refuses a bottle. It doesn't matter if it's expressed milk or formula she just refuses the actual bottle and works her self up so much. I would prefer to express but when I do express enough she refuses it and then I don't seem to have enough left for her to breastfeed and she gets hungry very quickly for the next few hours.
I've resorted to spoon feeding her to try and get her used to the formula and she takes it absolutely fine but she won't take enough for a full feed as obviously this takes a while and she gets frustrated.
I was thinking of putting her milk in a free flowing beaker and seeing if she takes it from that.
Has anyone else had this problem? Any advice?!
Thanks in advance x

[museumum]

Yes. Been there. We started a free flow spout cup at 5.5mo. Initially with water and then formula (I couldn't bear to express for the milk to all get spilled). It took about a month for him to get the hang of fully. We let him play with the water cup for ages till he was skilled enough to not get it everywhere before offering milk. By then he was weaning anyway and things can change v fast at 6mo if your baby takes to food. My ds never did accept a bottle and at 15mos we have lots of friends who are having trouble trying to drop bottles in favour of cups.

[MigGril]

Hi she is certainly only enough to take a free flow beaker by now and no reason why you can't try one. Remember that babies although can carry on breastfeeding as long as you like shouldn't have a bottle after 12months anyway as it can cause tooth decay. So if she takes to a cup well then it's often just easier to skip the bottle altogether at this age, as you would be introducing one with water soon anyway.

If you are also and thinking of doing this just to share feeds remember that you'll be starting to introduce solids soon to. And there is no reason why your partner can't get involved with this. Also once they are on some solids it can mean that you can leave then for a while with a solid feed and water without milk and go out for a bit and not worry so much about missing a feed so much. Although it can take a month or two for them to get used to solids. Some babies take to it faster then others.

Good luck and there is some really good information on Kellymom site hear that mite be helpful kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/feeding-tools/alternative-feeding/

[Katiesjm26]

Thank you both. I will try a beaker with water first then x

[FoodieMum3]

I bought a little beaker cup in aldi a few weeks ago. I think it's tommee tippee..
My ds refuses a bottle too so I'm just not going to bother even trying anymore and try beaker at 5 months or so.

Fingers crossed for us!

[Katiesjm26]

I tried the beaker today with formula and she took 90ml ??!! Fingers crossed it wasn't a one off. Thanks for your advice and good luck foodiemum3.