Need your tips for getting a baby to take a bottle

[neepsntatties]

dd is 3 months and ebf. She has taken a bottle in the past of expressed milk but has recently started to refuse. My aunt has tried but she gets distressed. I have a day of work at the month. Any tips?

Sorry to depress you but my DD has never taken a bottle (she's now 9.5m)... The only suggestions I can make are:

1. finishing a BF with a bottle - can you try to slip it in when she's sated (and therefore calmer), and slowly introduce it earlier and earlier in the feed until you begin with it?

2. try a sippy cup. DD will take that for some reason.

Hope someone else has more advice soon!

Warm milk. Stop bf until they accept bottle and offer only once for ten minutes at normal feed time. If they refuse take it away until next feed 3 or 4 hours later. No sooner. Swaddle them tightly and make sure teat is a fast flow. I guarantee success! Mine refused until 5 months and then I did all of the above and he was on a bottle after missing 2 feeds. I bf again after 3 days just pumped in between. I then gradually stopped over subsequent few weeks.

If you follow to letter it will work I promise.

Hi!

I also have a post about this topic (getting a baby to take a feed from a s8ippy cup). My DS started refusing a bottle at 3 months. I have had some success with a tommee tippee cup, but am still trying to get him onto a bottle.

I have been getting him to play with a bottle(empty) this week, so he gets used to having it in his mouth without getting upset. We are trying him with a feed tonight. See how it goes!

My DD2 also took a bottle of EBF until 3 months, then we had a couple of weeks where we didnt give her one (not intentionally, we just forgot) and since then she has refused to take one. She is now 7 months and has not taken a bottle since but I can now get her to take up to 6/7 oz out of a Nuby beaker (after trying various other ones including an open doidy cup, which she was happy with but half of the feed went down her bib!!). Even the simple tommee tippee beakers were more of a success than the bottle for DD2, so maybe your lo may prefer a beaker too?

Good luck, I know how frustrating it is! xx

If she's only 3 months you won't be able to get her to take enough from a zippy cup IMO. Once she realises foods not coming from the boob she will take it honestly. You just need to be more stubborn than her. I couldn't actually believe how effective it was (I paid for someone to tell me to do it!).

We've tried all the tips, several bottle brands and wasted so much expressed milk (heartbreaking!), but DD is still refusing a bottle. She's ten weeks, and took one when she was a few weeks old. I stupidly stopped giving her one and when I tried again after a fortnight she wouldn't take it...

My last throw of the dice is the Medela Special Needs bottle. I tried this morning and she didn't drink much, well anything really, but she didn't scream in the way she does with other bottles. I'm hoping this is progress which DH can build on over the weekend.

I am sure this won't be a popular sentiment with some, but I feel completely and utterly trapped by the fact she won't take a bottle, to the point that I often think that if I have another child I may not breastfeed at all. I adore my daughter, and realise that she is still very tiny, but I worry that this could go on forever...!!

i had exactly the same problem with my dd1 - she never took a bottle, and so did some friends. one person I know got the baby on a bottle by offering the bottle only everyday for the lunchtime feed (other feeds were still breast). After 2 weeks, baby took the bottle. But it is a long hard battle, and I don't know of any easy answers.

I couldn't cope with the screaming of not letting her bf until she takes a bottle. Never had this problem with ds. I also feel a bit trapped by it.

Word of warning on the starving the baby out approach - some babies are very stubborn and you may crack before your DD does! Our DS wouldn't take a bottle, we tried refusing feeds and offering the bottle, and he went 24 hours without a feed (age 5 months). We couldn't bear it any longer and gave in, so we'd tortured him for a day for no reason. I still feel guilty about that.

No answers, I'm afraid, OP: we never cracked it. DS is now 9 months and will take a feed from a cup, and I'm finally winding down BFing (leaping up and down and shouting hurrah: I have hated it for these last four months when I realised I was trapped, and I wasn't keen for the five months before that.)

You have all my sympathy, cocoachannel: if I'd known we could get into this position I wouldn't have BFed in the first place, or at least would have mixed fed. I went back to work when DS was 6 months old and we've survived, but it would have been a hundred times easier if he'd taken a bottle. The poor childminder spent the first month spooning formula into him for the feeds when I wasn't here.

Hi there, I just recently cracked the bottle with my 7 month old bottle refuser, and now she happily takes 2 bottles a day from it. I took a tommee tippee bottle, cut a massive hole in the teat (so that the liquid dripped out and she would realise liquid was in it), and tried her first with water (she is a good water drinker). She drank water from the bottle first time I did this.

I then used milk instead and she took it first time, although she made quite a mess spilling it everywhere. Then I switched back to a fast flow teat (size 3) and she drinks far more efficiently.

I also just discovered a sippy cup that is a cross between a bottle and cup - it's a tommee tippee 'tip it up', and has a spout, but the spout is made out of teat material, so it's soft, but easy to suck from. DD can drink water really quickly out of this cup (compared to the normal simple tommee tippee sippy cup we were using before), and I have given her milk out of this cup too. Also a success.

I completely understand the feeling trapped thing, as I breast fed exclusively every 2 hours till about 5.5 months when I started weaning, and was really fed up of not being to have any time for myself without having to take DD with me. Think DH was pretty annoyed at not being able to do things alone with her too without always having to account for the 2 hour feeding thing.

You should definitely bear in mind that even if they never take a bottle, the frequency of feeds will probably drop when they start eating solids, and you'll be able to have more time away.

Good luck everyone!

Thanks. I have to add that I really love breastfeeding. It's just that I have a day of work that I have agreed to at the end of the month and I am now in a panic about whether I will be able to go or not. I wish I had not said I would do it now.

I can understand that, I'm going back to work in a couple of months and know that as soon as I go back I'm going to have to fly to the office, and thus be out of the house from 4am till 10pm, missing every single feed of the day - the pressure to get a bottle or cup sorted was definitely there! I'm sure you'll work something out...If all else fails, have you got someone who could hang out with your baby close to your work and you could take a break to breastfeed?

Neep It's so hard isn't it, can somebody else do it for you? My MIL has had great sucess with getting my LO to take the bottle (if you're not there they can't smell you). You may not want to, but have you tried a bit of formula in a bottle? Maybe the different taste may make a difference.

My aunt has been trying (dh away at the moment) but no joy. I guess we will just have to keep trying. It's only one day but I don't want to not do it as I need the money and I don't want to let them down.