introducing bottle to 3 month old baby

[booboobunny]

hi, can anyone offer any advice on getting a 3 month old baby to take a bottle? we are only just starting this as i was advised to make sure that breast feeding was firmly established before trying it. quite cross to see that everyone else just got stuck in early! so far she is pretty resistant and we always end up going back to what she knows, but her dad is desperate to feed her, and i'd quite like a night out one of these days. anyone have any words of wisdom for me? we've been trying for about a week, with no success.
thanks

Prepare Bottle
Leave house
Tell dh to expect screaming!!
Shove teat in her mouth
Experiment with teats- I liked the Mam Teats

Good luck- we introduced bottle at 8wks and eventually dd accepted it. If she is hungry she will drink.

Nuk teats are also very good....can buy the teats and bottles in large branches of Boots or on line and 'baby supplies'

We had a nightmare with this too. baby (boy!) was having nothing to do with bottles...tried everything in the books / boards. In the end, cracked it with the Tommee Tippee "Closer to Nature" bottles/teats which are wide and shallow to mimic the breast. That was our eureka moment! I think the other teats were simply making him gag.

hi, thanks for the advice. i have the tommee tippee bottles, but they don't seem to do the trick. she's less resistant to having them in her mouth, but she just dribbles everything out? really starting to worry that i've left it too late. she just loves breastfeeding and always drops off when doing it. i'll try to get the other bottles at the weekend but i'm getting a bit worried now....

booboobunny I'm so glad I'm not the only one. We have been trying to introduce DS to a bottle since he was just a few weeks old we have just left it for 2 weeks and tried again and he still won't take it. He is now 10 wks old and I have ordered the breast shaped bottle from Blooming Marvellous, this is the only bottle on the market we haven't tried so if that doesn't work....

No-one seems to have any advice for me apart from "starve him until he has to take it", this I just can't and won't do but I have to admit to being at the end of my tether. He is still breast feeding every 2-2 1/2 hours and have only been able to leave him once for an hour. To make things worse for the last couple of weeks he will only sleep for 2 hours at a time including at night and I'm exhausted. I will watch this thread to see if anyone can offer you any advice.

Can't really add much from my experience as DD took to the bottle and abandonned BF but friend tried with DD and only suceeded with nuk teats. I use the tomee tipee ones so if you've already tried them then not sure. My mum says my sister was exactly same with 2hrly feeding and wouldn't take a bottle. Hope you have more sucess.

When we introduced a bottle for the first time, I left DH and BabyRed to it, but she was having none of it and I had to come in and bf. The second time, she still wasn't keen but I watched him through the door, and I noticed that when she was turning her head away from it, he was moving the bottle with her head, kind of chasing her mouth iyswim. I pointed out that she's not used to that, as I can't move my norks like that! If she turns away from them, then she has to turn back to them if she changes her mind and wants to feed. Maybe she felt hassled by having the teat pushed in her face even when she turned away. So he kept the bottle still and after a bit of faffing, she turned back to it and gave it a try. It still took her a few goes before she was completely happy, but that was the key for us.

Don't know if that'll help but that was our experience. You will get there in the end - a friend of mine spent weeks trying to convince her dd to take the bottle as she had to go back to work. She tried everything, and in the end it was just perseverence. It took a while, but she's absolutely fine now - seems to prefer it to bf!!

Good luck.