Starting to ebf with 3 month old - just doesn't seem to get it!

[bizziebee]

Help! Going back to work soon and need baby to take a bottle. Am expressing a small amount each day and trying her with the a bottle - a tommee tippee. Baby just can't seem to suck on it - the teat gets rolled around and pushed out the side and my precious milk just goes everywhere! Dad has tried also with even less success. How did others manage the transition? What combinations of teats and bottles worked? Trying to keep pfaffing to a minimum!

I haven't got any experience about this (as my first breastfed son took to a bottle like a duck to water!) but I would have thought if you put a drop of milk on the outside of the teat so your baby can taste it, it might be more of an incentive to suck.

Also, because he had reflux so we used a dummy (because sucking increases saliva which neutralises the acid), and he was you stay a silicone teat in his mouth, Which could have helped. So unless you have aversion to dummies maybe the introduction of one could help. If you do that I would also put a drop of milk on the teat so it tastes nice and promote sucking.

Ugh! Apologies for the typos, since I upgraded my IPhone os the auto text has become much more sensitive!

thanks atrcts!
just realised ebf doesn't mean expressed breast feeding. Bloody acronyms! To be clear - baby is breast feed now and i want to move to expressed bottle feeding.

Different sorts of bottles may work better. Can you try different teats, just in the hope one will appeal?

How soon are you going back to work?

Some babies get on better with an open cup or similar.

It's relatively late to be introducing a bottle - some babies just don't get the hang of it....my EBF DD took tommee tippee closer to nature bottles quite well. Alternatively I agree something like a doidy cup might be better. At 4 months you can introduce a sippy cup.

Just going back in part-time - in a a couple of weeks. Will try a cup but imagining it will be messy!

My lo has had all sorts of problems with sucking but the teat she manages best is the medela calma ones. They are very pricey (12.99 a pop) but they are supposed to mimic breastfeeding. Once used to that she then took the tommee tippee. I did introduce a bottle early though.

Good luck x

My dd does the same thing with the tommee tippee. She sort of pushes it off to the side and it makes a right bloody mess! We are trying different types. But Have found that she struggles with all of them in different ways! I have eventually managed to get her to drink from a bottle by trying every day at a time when she is calm. She still doesn't enjoy the bottle and we often end up with milk everywhere! Interestingly I tried a bottle of sma ready made formula with the ready to use teat and she got on really well with it so I am now on the hunt for teats similar to that which I can use with expressed milk. Babies are bloody fussy aren' t they!

Ugh, we had this problem. Tried lots of different teats and different milk temperatures.

What i think worked in the end was simply offering DC a bottle at the same time every day and not bf straight away if he refused it. Took a week with some better, some worse days before he got the hang of it but I think the consistency of a bottle at the same time every day helped.

I've just introduced my 4wk old to 1 bottle of breast milk a day (well, 2am for my husband to help out) with no problems at all. We use mam anti-colic bottles with the size 1 newborn teat.
The first time we gave her a bottle we chose a time when we were both there & chilled & baby was hungry but quite calm. We were expecting some difficulty so talked about it first, but she was a star. I'm lucky I know.
Good luck