how to introduce bottle feeding in EBF 4 month old

[poonchi]

i have a 4 month old DD2 who i have been exclusively Breast feeding till now. i want to introduce the bottle so that i can give her one at 10/11pm. i have started to try and introduce it in the day around 3ish as she would not take it in her sleep. initially tried with avent and now trying with tommee tippee. she cries quite a lot and only takes about 2 oz over about 1 hour of trying. my MIL is kindly trying the bottle feeds. any tips/suggestions on how to get some success please????

Are you giving her your expressed milk via bottle or artificial milk? If it's the latter, she may not like it initially as lets face it, its never gunna be a tasty as mummies, lol!

It may be the flow that she is struggling with. BF babies are used to putting effort in to getting milk and when they apply the same effort to bottles, they can feel like they are choking due to their little mouths flooding with milk. Try a newborn/slow flow teats.

Failing that, my 1st and 2nd DD's would not take bottles and the first one used to have to be spoon fed my expressed milk by nursery staff after I had returned to work. Needless to say, she ended up wearing more than she swallowed which was soul-destroying!

Anticipating the same with DD2, I invested in the Haberman Feeder (now called the Special Needs Feeder) made by Medela and sold in Mothercare. It is a pricey bottle - about £17, but worth every penny. It was originally designed for special needs babies like those born with Down's or with cleft paletes, but it was found that breastfed babies also liked them as they have to use the same effort as they would on the breast. The milk has to be worked out, it does not tickle out through gravity, like with a standard bottle.

I hope some of that has been of some use xx

It is quite common for older babies to reject the bottle when they have been breastfeeding. When a baby breastfeeds, she will scoop up the breast, create a seal and then lap the breast to create a negative pressure/suction in her mouth. This suction draws the milk into her mouth and then she will swallow.

To feed in this manner, that baby uses muscles at the back of her mouth. Bottles work on a different principle in that the milk flows freely unless you use the Haberman feeder.

There is a new bottle on the market (very new and only found in Mother until January) called the Medela Calma bottle which works on the same priciple as breastfeeding. As the milk is only transfered when the correct level of suction is created, she will get milk, making nipple teat confusion redundant.

I would also suggest that you offer the breast first (take the edge off her hunger) then offer the bottle and then finish a feed (to reasure her that you are not taking the breast away, and maintain her daily milk intake so that she doesn't start to wake frequently at night)

This usually sorts out bottle refusal. I hope it works for you.

thank you for your suggestions. i may need to invest in some other bottles. at the moment i have gone straight to formula feeds and am not expressing. will try offerring the breast first too.