When to introduce a bottle?

[Haddock73]

We want ds2 to take a bottle of ebm (in case of emergencies and I'm not there for whatever reason). We waited til ds1 was 8 weeks and it took 2 months for him to take the bottle, did we wait too long?

When should we introduce a bottle of ebm this time? Ds2 is 4 days old.

Was thinking 3 weeks?

Congratulations haddock

I'm the worst person to advise you on this as I have 2 very adamant bottle refusers but hopefully this will bump for you.

I think the general idea is to wait until breast feeding is established. If you give bottles before breast feeding is well established, it can undermine breast feeding as the baby can prefer the bottle as he or she doesn't have to suck so much/ get attachment right.

I had this at 4 weeks. It was a nightmare to try and get her back on the breast after giving her one bottle of EBM.

I didn't get her to take a bottle at all before I went back to work. However she had no difficulty taking it off her childminder!

I think it must depend on the individual baby. I tried at 3 or 4 weeks with DS, once I felt breastfeeding was going well (he had a tongue-tie cut at 3 weeks) - took a bottle fine and continued to do so occasionally from then on. He also had a dummy from about the same time without any breastfeeding problems.

Congratulations on your baby!

I started giving a bottle of EBM after a week as we wanted DS to be fine at taking bottles. First we only gave him one every 4-5 days, but from 3 weeks old we decided to give a bottle of formula as his 10/11pm feed as I was just too exhausted. Giving him a bottle has never affected my breastfeeding the rest of the time.

DD is nearly 8 weeks and has been taking a bottle of EBM from 3 weeks without any problems but she reassuringly still prefers the boob.

Ds has been offered a bottle of EBM most days since sbout 5 wks - he was v happy bfing by then and is my second so I was confident in that. He's now 12wks and happy with bottles although usually only takes 100ml or so.

I'd recommend not leaving more than 2/3 days between bottles though - we left DD a week at about 10wks snd she was them a refuser until 8m and the runup to my return to work, which was quite stressful!