Breastfed 12 week old won't take a bottle

[mischabischa]

I'm having to return to work quite shortly and my 12 week old will not take a bottle. Have tried various bottles, teats etc and she took a bottle of breast milk a few weeks ago, no probs but I then tried her with formula which seems to have put her off - now she won't take breast milk from a bottle either! She gets really distressed now if a bottle goes anywhere near her. My mum and DH are giving her the bottle so she can't smell me! I'm getting desperate - please does anyone have any suggestions?

My first son was the same and ended up going straight onto a cup.

Have you tried breasfflow bottles? Available from amazon or their own website. Apparently very good!

We finally succeeded with Breastflow bottles. They offer a free sample on their website but it takes a while to arrive.

Having said that I also changed my approach to getting DD to take a bottle at the same time- so it may have been that which helped. The key seemed to be offering her a bottle at EVERY daytime feed. When she refused we'd walk around for ten mins before bfing. At the end of day one she stopped the screaming. By the end of day two she was taking about 30mls. Then on day three she woke up and took a full feed. It had to be me feeding her as DH was at work.

Good luck!

DS used to take a bottle of ebm only if he was in a really odd position (e.g. sitting on lap facing outwards & leaning backwards, or sitting in bouncy chair) - if he was sitting in the cradle hold bf position he wasn't having any of it, just wanted a boob.

I LOVE the breastflow bottles. They're fab - 7 week old DD switches between the bottle and the boob just great with it. I jsut wished I'd bought it first instead of spending a small fortune on all the other different ones. She doesn't have it that often as I'm a bit crap at expressing but there's no problem with her taking from it. Go get! Go get! Go Get!

Thanks everyone. I have tried the breastflow bottles but I think she is just being stubborn! She's getting herself really stressed as soon as any kind of teat goes near. Think we will try a cup (but not the first stage one ad that still involves sucking which she won't do!). Thanks for all your suggestions I'll let you know how we get on!

mischabischa still struggling with my 19week old to get her to have a bottle and have tried breastflow too, cups etc. Go back to work next week and feel like crying as i just thought she would eventually crack it. I'm so worried she is going to spend the 5 hours crying. Dh keeps saying she will do it when i'm not there. Just not convinced! DD will just not suck at all. either. Think a rag soaked in milk would be easier as she enjoys sucking on sleeves! Sorry that was a bit of hi-jack there!

Ha ha, don't worry! Someone else in the same boat! I've been told all along to keep out of the way so she can't smell me but yesterday someone said that maybe she associates a bottle with me not being there so that might be why she gets upset - I can't do right for doing wrong! Let me know how it goes.

I was in the same boat too (and had to delay going back by a week). DS was 16 weeks or so at the time. I was told to do all feeds from a bottle but I was worried DS would go off bf altogether like that, so I just fed the day feeds by bottle, and tried to keep the timings quite consistent, i.e. didn't go out, didn't do anything other than try to get him to drink from a bottle. For the first three days there was lots of crying (from both of us) and he took 30-90ml of milk but no more. On the forth day he started to get it and it took a week for him to consistently take the full amount. I used formula mostly because I was fed up of throwing away undrunk ebm and tried loads of different temperatures, teats, positions.

Just keep plugging away, you WILL get there. And this seems to be such a common problem I don't know why no-one seems to talk about it more.

I had recently tried everything to get my 10week old to take a bottle, different bottles/teats, cups, spoons, different people ect ect EVERYTHING and got nowhere! untill i found the MAM bottles, they are brilliant designed for breast fed babies and my little girl took strait to it :)

Well I managed to leave my DD for this week when I was back in work. We ended up using a fastflow cup as it was the only way she was getting any milk. She has had all the milk I had expressed (which took me nearly a month) and is now starting to take formula from the cup too! I'm off again now for the summer hols so have 6 weeks to try and stop the bfing altogether - I just don't think I'll be able to manage it when I'm full time permanently. Thanks for all the suggestions - I think we've found the thing that works with the cup!!