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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Can you be signed off work to breastfeed a baby under 6 months?

33 replies

emmam25 · 14/05/2012 18:19

I have already given my return to work date but little one won't take a bottle at all. I have been told that if my little one won't take a bottle and are under 6 months the doctor could sign me off work to enable me to continue to breastfeed. Does anyone know if this is true?

OP posts:
DonInKillerHeels · 14/05/2012 19:15

"PS my job is full time and would not allow enough time for enough breaks to express or to feed so that limits my options."

They legally HAVE to give you this. You need to talk to them.

rubyhorse · 14/05/2012 19:16

Can you delay returning?

KellyKettle · 14/05/2012 19:16

Oh please don't give a small baby milkshake in a bottle.

thisisyesterday · 14/05/2012 19:21

but that is surely because the mum is then very important for the baby's welfare?
if a child will not eat any solids and the only thing it will tolerate is milk direct from breast then yes, i can see why a mum would be given time off work/signed off.

but that's quite extreme circumstances isn't it? and it's because the baby would clearly suffer if mum was not there to breastfeed.

with a baby who is eating solid well and taking other fluids during the day, and breastfeeding around mums working hours then there really would be no reason to sign her off

xkcdfangirl · 14/05/2012 19:39

Hi emmam - sorry to hear you are having a stressful time. I remember being very upset by the same issue many moons ago (DS is nearly 3 now). I know it must be making you really unhappy, it's awful to feel you can't feed your baby in the way he needs. However, you've got a few weeks and you may get there. Here's my top tip which I've dispensed may times now to women having the same problem and most times that I've shared it I've heard back a while later to let me know that it worked.

I found, with my DS anyway, that this trick helped him to get the hang of bottle feeding. The problem, as I understood it later, was that every time he had had milk from me, throughout his entire life, he was being cuddled by me in a particular way that he was used to, sideways on and facing me. He had no experience of feeding in any other position. When I tried to bottle-feed him, I was holding him on his back in the "normal" bottle feeding position. He didn't associate this position with being fed, and didn't understand that the thing I was trying to put in his mouth would feed him. He was hungry and cross and not ammenable to suncking anything that wasn't my breast.

I used the tommytippee bottles that have a wide, breast-like teat and a small, squat bottle (but other women have used the same trick with other bottles). I slipped a bottle of blood-temperature milk on its side, inside my clothes, basically in my armpit with the teat as close to my nipple as I could get it. I then held DS in the normal breastfeeding position, but with my own nipple covered with cloth and the bottle's teat by his mouth. He latched on to it happily then.

After a week or so of feeding like this, I started to remove the bottle from my clothes mid-suck (without him un-latching) and let him carry on sucking in a more normal position - this enabled him to start recognising the look and feel of the bottle as a normal thing. Eventually he started recognising the bottle for what it was, and no more subterfuge was necessary.

BalloonSlayer · 14/05/2012 19:41

Sorry to further derail - I asked about allergies - but I could never express (too uptight!) and none of my DCs would take a bottle either.

It was not an issue for us but I wondered what would have happened if I had had to continue BF for DS's sake but also needed to return to work to avoid losing my job and needing the money.

Las3097 · 14/05/2012 21:20

My daughter would never take a bottle - then around 6months I came accross a bottle to cup trainer in sainsburys (£2.50 each- morrisons also have them) they hVe a white flat style teat, not seen one like it on anything else. She takes to it easily and her mouth makes the same action as If she was bf-ing. I also started to give her a no spill sippy cup of water when she was playing to just play with and figure out. After a while she learnt to drink from it herself which made introducing other kinda of cup easy. There is light at the end I the tunnel! X

fatmummy35 · 27/05/2012 22:49

Could you not delay your return to work until your little one is established with your expressed milk.

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