Best bottles for breast fed baby?

[BuckminsterFullerene]

I hope you can help, I'm running out of ideas.

I've just returned to work (full time) and my breast-fed 23-week-old DS is refusing to take anything from a bottle/sippy cup.

The childminder and DH have been spoon feeding him some milk, but he's not taking anywhere near enough.

We have been giving him the odd bottle since he was a few weeks old, and he was taking them ok. But now, apparently not.

We've got Tommee Tippy closer to nature bottles. He's also tried both types of their sippy cups with no success. So I'm thinking of trying different brands/types of bottles.

Which bottles have you found successful with your breast fed baby?

Thanks.

Hello,
We went through a whole palaver of trying to get dd to take a bottle and I think it took us a month in the end... We tried:

Dr Brown (something like anti-wind or colic) - she couldn't really latch on to it properly as the teat was quite long.

NUK - the milk flow was too fast and I was told you can't actually buy the slowest flowing teat in the this country. I may be wrong about this though but I couldn't find anywhere here that sold them and I think someone on MN told me you couldn't buy them here. The latex teats were great though and a lot of people have success with these bottles apparently.

Breastflow - these were the ones that she finally got the hang of it with. They do have a website I think and you can pick them up in TK Maxx I found out after I'd paid full price for them!

Hopefully your ds will pick it up faster than my dd. I did post how we managed to get her to do it on MN, let me know if you want me to try and find the post. Good luck. x

thanks for that missrose,

I've just been looking at the NUK and breastflow ones on amazon.

If you've got a trick that helped your DD take the bottles, I'd love to read about it!

I've copied and pasted it below. I hope it's of some use to you!

---

Hello,
I thought I would drop a quick note in here about introducing a bottle to an BF baby. I've been trying for a month and it seems that this morning she finally cracked it!

Hopefully someone will find it useful as I've used the Mumsnet message boards extensively for info about this.

We tried Dr Brown's and NUK without any luck. I think the NUK would have worked but the flow was too fast and she was getting distressed with it.

In the end it's the Breastflow bottles she's found easiest. I picked up so many tips from Mumsnet, but what worked this morning was to really heat the milk and the teat. Also, I've found that she's more comfortable with me than anyone else, probably because of the BF connections.

I've had her leaning against a pillow rather than holding her so she couldn't try to get to the breast and I've only tried to feed her bottles when she's calm and recently fed. Also, I wait until she's trying to put her fist in her mouth and then quickly substitute with the bottle.

Funnily enough, I was thinking this morning that I'd had enough of pouring expressed milk down the sink so was going to stop as I don't want to get obsessed with it. Fingers crossed she'll take the bottle tomorrow but quite frankly I wouldn't be surprised if she acts as she's never seen it before in her short little life!

Anyway, hope that's of some help for others facing the same uphill struggle!

Thanks!

My DD only started taking a bottle from me when she was lying on her play gym busy doing stuff

Useful thread thanks - I'm starting to think about this as returning to work in 6 weeks when dd will be 6 months.

Thanks for all the advice, folks.

But... Aaaargh. He still won't take the breastflow bottle.

Having said that, it could just be because it's me trying to give them (and he knows where the boobs are kept!). Hopefully we'll have more success with the CM tomorrow.

Hi, I used the breastflow bottles with ds who was not keen at all. One good way was when he was half asleep in his car seat after a car journey. He never got on with the silly cup at all.

It just took time, however that's all I thought about, so I think iwas more worried than I really needed to be. It was all I could talk about! I breastfed at night for a short while as well, (he was at nursery from 4.5 mo) so I think he was also reverse feeding for a while - so getting a lot of what he needed from the 6 night feeds (yes, 6 feeds at night on ft work!).

Could that also be possible with your lo?

Hi, my dd is 17 weeks & has been taking a bottle for a week now but I have been trying since she was 6 weeks old! I tried tommee tippee then medela then breastflow & finally MAM bottles which have actually worked. I threw that much expressed breast milk down the drain trying to get her to accept a bottle it's distressing :( I tried different times, positions, different people,teats,formula, hot & cold you name it & I tried it! I even went to a spa for a day - was away 7 hours of which she slept for 4 & screamed for 3 but still refused a bottle.
It's been hard but im glad I didn't give up.

Best of luck

Woop! He took the bottle today! He had more milk at the CM today than almost all last week put together!

Brilliant!

Thanks for your help & reassurance. Hopefully it's onwards & upwards for him now!