refusing bottle after being bf, help!

[baileyboo1]

Hi, my 8 week old baby is refusing a bottle after BF for the first 8 weeks. I want to introduce a couple of bottles a day. Anyone have any ideas on how to get my baby to accept it. I was told to wait 6-8 weeks before I introduced a bottle, but I wished I had done it from day 1.

Hi bailey, someone cleverer will be along in a minute, but I'll offer what I can. When I had this with ds at 16 weeks I tried every type of bottle I could borrow from friends and eventually won with the ones called NUK from boots. You can get them with a brown rubbery teat instead of the transparent silicon teat, I think it's a bit softer in the baby's mouth. I also found he liked the milk slightly warmer than I'd have thought. And I had to hold him quite upright for feeding.

And, when all that didn't really work, I just had to be really mean and tell him that for 24 hours he just wasn't going to eat unless it was from the bottle. I was expecting it to be really hard, lots of crying, but he actually figured it out quite quickly. Once he got it that that it was nice milk in there, he never looked back and we've been able to switch between boob and bottle with no problems.

Hi. I used several bottles before finding breastflow to be ok.

You have to keep trying and keep trying but dd got the hang of the breastflow one after two or three attempts.

Bf babies use a different suck so im told snd struggle with a bottle suck sometimes. From 9 months she was ok with any bottle but still find breastflow to be best.

I personally wouldn't withhold milk from a bottle refusing baby but I know my friend who had a similar problem did and all went well.

I second the latex teat idea - I got mine from playtex (yes, I know...) there's a thread somewhere documenting my misery and eventual success in getting my DS transferred from breast to bottle, I'm on my phone I'm afraid so I can't link to it, but it may help. The playtex teat was what eventually persuaded him to make the change. And here's some because I know how stressful it is.

I think some babies just never take a bottle. My DD was one of them. I tried everything. Different/bottles/temperatures/times of day/awake/asleep you name it, I tried it.

DS on the other hand took one no problem.

Sorry I know that doesn't help you at all.

Thank you for your advice. Finally after a few days he has taken his first bottle this evening. It was only a small amount, but I think he will take it now. Perseverance is the key I think.

I was going to say perseverence! We tried on odd occasions btw 10 weeks and 3.5 months to get DD to take a bottle, no joy. Then, at about 4.5 months, we devised a plan of doing it consistently and not necessarily when she was hungry - DH would take her downstairs each morning and play with her and just introduce the bottle in a playful way. Eventually he got her to take a few ml - great progress. Then he tried a doidy cup and had better luck. He can get her to take about 50ml that way. It's better than nothing and means I can go out for a bit knowing she won't starve.