15 weeks exclusively breastfed and is refusing point blank to take a bottle.

[gillykins2011]

I am going back to work mid nov and don't want to leave her bawling with the nanny. Can anyone give me any advice on best way to reduce breadtfeeding? Ideally I would love to keep the morning, bedtime and 10pm/night time as a breadtfeed but need her to take the 10am, 1pm and 4pm as bottle feeds. My husband is not around in the day and we have no family close by who I can ask to help me and I feel bad asking friends to help me with such an awful task as she truly bAwls.

Have you tried getting someone else to give the bottle feed? It may be that your lo is frustrated when you try and give a bottle when your boobs are right there and that is what you normally do! Another tip is to try and give a dream feed as a bottle to 'trick' them to drinking from a bottle as they are so tired they might not notice! I know you said you didn't want to give the dream feed as a bottle but it might just work as a starting point.

We had similar situation and just had to keep perservering with the bottle every day until DD got better and better with it. A few things that worked for us:

• tried giving DD small quantities with a beaker or oral syringe, which is what we also use if we give her Calpol. She was more receptive to this than the bottle in the early days.
• never gave her a bottle during normal feed times when she was really hungry. It was usually better received if it was more exploratory with no pressure.
• tried lots of different kinds of bottles.
• I gave her bottle if DH wasn't around. DD was ok with this as long as I still BF during normal feed times. So you don't necessarily need to rely on friends. I like being able to give her a bottle now if we're out and about b/c I hate bf'ing in public.
• Visit kellymom again and again for ideas and reassurance.

Good luck.

Marking place... LO is 6 weeks & refusing to take bottle.

Same issue here with 14 week old and I am working twice a week for 2 hours! She will drink a bit and then waits for me and frets. OH has suggested trying her on a bottle every day and me expressing every evening.

I'm still struggling with this but have had two minor breakthroughs which may help:

1 - I was finding it really frustrating seeing my expressed milk being 'wasted' when LO wouldn't take the bottle so a friend has suggested using cooled boiled water in the bottle until he gets used to it. This obviously doesn't help him take it, but is making me more calm about it, which in turn means I am trying it more often

2 - I realised the bottles smelt of the dishwasher rather than 'breast' (?!?!) so have started pouring a tiny bit of expressed milk over them to get the smell right, then rubbing lasinoh on the teats. DP thought I'd gone mad when I first gave him a dirty looking bottle treated this way, but it seems to work

LO still won't drink a decent amount from a bottle, but he will accept it being in his mouth now, kind of 'play' with it and has drunk a tiny bit.

We're going to push it this weekend while we're both around to try it more often (during the week DP is only here for the evening feeds, when LO is fussier)