Best time to introduce a bottle to prevent bottle refusal,

[Bexleymum]

My dc2 is due in a few weeks, and it will be great to hear of anyone that managed to mix/combination feed. I bf my daughter for 16mths but she was a complete bottle/dummy refuser. It was quite hard going at times being the only one that could feed her and I would ideally like to have a few more options this time around. So when is the best time to try a bottle? Any hints and tips?

Here's what we did with DD:

Introduced a bottle at 4 weeks (actually 4 weeks corrected - 10 weeks actual as she was 6 weeks early. But it was 4 weeks after she first started properly latching to the boob). One bottle per day of EBM, at 10-11 pm. Given by DH.

Kept giving daily bottle till c.6 months (corrected)

Stopped bothering with daily bottle then, did a bottle once a week or so instead. There were a few days where she refused the bottle but didn't last long.

Switched to mix feeding at about 10 months. No issues getting her to take bottle.

Also she was always routine fed not demand fed and boob was never used as comfort (well almost never) which I think helped the transition. And I stopped feeding her to sleep at bedtime sometime around 5 months (still fed back to sleep in the middle of the night sometimes, but the main thing was that she'd learned to self settle so didn't need the BF to go to sleep).

Of course she may have just been one of those babies who isn't that attached to the boob - maybe she would have taken a bottle easily no matter what I did! I don't think there are any guarantees either way.

There are no guarantees of when a bottle will be accepted each baby is different.

Dd1 refused a bottle from 4 weeks and never ever took one.

Dd2 will take a bottle every few weeks when needed.

One of my friends gave daily bottle from birth her daughter started refusing at 5 weeks and has never accepted one since. She did the same with her first who never refused one.

DS1 is 4 weeks old and we introduced a bottle a week ago when he was 3 weeks. Bfing is going well but I just want to be able to have a break now and again. We took the advice from friends who waited longer and their babies never took one. I let DH do it and leave the room. He fussed the first 2 nights with an Avent bottle but did eventually take it (my expressed milk). I would have given up with his tears but DH is more persistent! I ordered a Tomme Tippee, NUK and MAM bottke from Amazon after his fussiness and a Tommee Tippee is the winner. He's also taking a dummy.

Every baby is different but it seems like 3 weeks has worked ok for us.

DD was ebf for a year. Gave her the occasional (weekly) bottle of ebm from about 3/4 weeks & she always took them no trouble

DS is now 12 weeks & we took the same approach expecting he'd accept a bottle too but he's refused all except the first attempt - just took an ounce though.

Usually use avent & also tried nuk with latex teat but no joy.

Maybe it comes down more to the baby than the timing? Hope you have more luck.

Thanks for all your responses. I know it's probably highly dependant on the baby, but want to give it our best shot, especially as will have a 2.5 yr old demanding attention too.