how do i get my breastfed son to take a bottle?

[nervousmum]

my son is nearly 4 weeks old, and is exclusively breastfed. I have to go to a very important meeting next week, which involves being away from home for several hours. Expressing is not a problem - i appear to have an over-abundance of milk, so my freezer is well stocked. However, trying to give it to my son is a different matter entirely! He point-blank refuses both a bottle, and a dummy (recommended by the health visitor to relieve his colic and help his hiccups). Any suggestions?

Try him when he isn't too hungry. Perhaps start on the breast first and then switch to the bottle? Or, and this is what we did, dp gave him the bottle when I was out of the room. The thinking is, is that if ds thought the breast was on offer, he wouldn't want the bottle.

Sorry if you have tried both of those things.

In my experience you will have trouble doing it. Your'll have to get somebody else to give him a bottle initially. I would suggest first give whomever is going to have your son your pillow case or something that smells strongly of you. When that person feeds him put in around him and then give him the bottle. Who have you got giving him the bottle, hopefully its an incredibly calm relaxed person (it helps because the baby tends to pick up on any stress). The other thing you son might not want to be picked up but might prefer his pram or somewhere really familiar.

Good luck, perhaps have a trial run so you don't worry.

Oh and PS he can go for quite a few hours without a feed (as long as he gets a drink) and he will make it up very quickly when you get home. Have you got a small bottle for water, he'll only need a few drops every now and then. AND, sorry thinking as I writing, a bit of sugar in boiled water helps brilliantly with collic. The sugar acts as painkiller relaxing the stomach, up pops the burb, or down as the case may be.

My HV recommended the sugar in water trick for constipation, so if you try that, you might get more than you bargained for

I agree with the advice to let your partner feed the baby from the bottle while you're out of sight - if he can see and smell that the breast is available, that's what he'll go for every time.

Another thing to try is to give him the milk in a small cup, rather than a bottle - small babies will often lap milk from a cup in preference to taking a bottle. I found the cover from an Avent bottle was the ideal size, and dd would polish off a fair amount of expressed milk that way.

I know a few people that have done that as well and it worked for them.

Maybe the sugar water is a good stomach problem solution

It must be - it certainly did the trick for the constipation!!

A lot of people I know were horrified that the HV should have suggested such a thing, but it works, and dd doesn't seem to have suffered any for it.

My ds took a bottle eventually when I refused to feed him for 4 hours. I think if they're hungry enough they'll take whatever's on offer! Btw what bottles/teats are you using?

The bottles are Tommy Tippee ones that came free with the steriliser. They have got nuby (?sp) teats on them. As for dummies, i have tried both the orthadontic and the cherry teat ones, both of which have unceremoniously ended up on the floor courtesy of Joey spitting them out in disgust!

I'll definitely give the whole 'partner feeding him' thing a go - i'll have to totally remove myself from the situation though, as i hate to see my son get so upset, and i'll just cave in and BF him!

We had a degree of progress this morning - he took about 12mls of water from a medicine pipette squeezed into his mouth as a small constant stream. Re the sugar water, this is going to sound really lame, but how much sugar should i actually add, and to what quantity of cooled boiled water? I don't want my son turning into a raging sugar fiend at the tender age of a month old!

1/2 a teaspoon to 4oz is more than enough, I think. Sounds like your doing all the right things. Good luck

the only way I could ever get dd to take a bottle was to distract her with something else e.g. sit her facing outwards looking at a tree, with its leaves waving in the breeze.
she would NEVER take a bottle from me - not that easily fooled!

I can't help with the bottle thing - my DS doesn't mind whether he gets breast or bottle. I do try to encourage him to latch onto the bottle as he would the boob - i.e. touching the top lip until he opens his mouth and then putting the bottle fairly far in his mouth so he has a good mouthful.

The Tommee Tippee bottles are great. They mimic the breast very well - it's the ones my HV and breast feeding counsellor recommended to me.

As for a dummy - my DS would also spit his out all the time. It took a fair bit of perseverance with it to get him to take it. We found giving him it when he was a bit sleepy but not upset the best bet.