help please, breastfeeding and wont take bottle

[Joanne69]

I breastfed dd1 for 1 year, subsituted by bottles when I wanted to go out/have a break etc. I think this is what made our feeding experience so positive, I could have a break when I wanted. Anyway, trying to do the same thing with dd2 and she just wont have it, started giving her expressed milk at 3 weeks and she kind of took it OK, but since then its got worse and worse and now she just screams the place down and trys to push the teat out with her tongue, she is now 3 months old. I've tried different teats/expressed/formula/different positions. DH normally tries to feed her, my mum has also tried with no luck. So far she has gone 6 hours through the day when I went out without milk and didnt even seem that bothered. Does anybody have any words of wisdom. Everybody tells me that she will take a bottle if she is hungry enough but thats so hard to do.

Same experience last year, when dd was 4 months.
I mixfed her when she was newborn, no problem at all. Then I switched to bf entirely until she was 4 months and then needed to switch to the bottle again and it was hell.
I felt very badly - she wanted the breast and i was depriving her...- she screamed like hell.
I persevered and eventually she accepted the bottle.
I think that the Playtex system (bottle with liner inside + teat similar to nipple) helps a lot. The suckling techique required on the playtex teat is much more similar to that required on the nipple than that of a standard teat. Babies are confused when they switch from breast to bottle - they have to perform a different job and they do not know what to do (newborn babies are more flexible). The playtex system really helped me.

I gave sa smifgeon of cows milk to sucker him in the n swapped to fromula

Hi Joanne,
Same happened to me.
DD was nightmare to re-introduce bottle after a few weeks off when he was 12 weeks old.
Sadly I have no easy answer. I gave up trying in the end becuase it all seemed like too much grief.
From 5 months old he had a tommy tippee beaker to play with. I started food at about 6 months and the beaker had milk, water, dil juice, whatever at every meal.
He started using it properly about 1 month ago!
ie at 8.5months!!
I had no major reason to force the cup/bottle, and gave up getting stressed as I was happy to bf him really, I just wanted the convenience at that time.
Luckily, I'm not back to work till next week, and he now takes his morning milk from beaker, with bf last thing at night.
Not sure if this will help you, she will take it in the end.....for me it was much laer.
A friend's baby took it from her MIL about 5 mins after she had left the house. Ths was a 4month baby.
Good luck, remember it will happen, but not sure actually when it will happen!

Same thing here, luckily I only had to go out to college once a week so basically he had to cry when his dad had him. At 6 months he started drinking expressed milk from the Avent bottles but with the kind of cup spout on it iykwim! He kind of laps it up like a kitten, bless! I'd forget about the teat and wait until you can try with a cup/beaker.

You say that you have tried different teats, did you try the NUK teats?

here's what we did: it took this combination about 1 week to work!

dh fed him, i was in a different room ( where he couldnt smell my milk!!!)

ds was in car seat (if dh held him, ds would just nuzzle into his chest looking for breast!)

NUK teats (definatly a good idea)

offer the bottle when she's not too tired, and not too hungry. if she is tired/cranky/starving she will only want breast. try giving it about an hour after breastfeed.

keep trying...it took us (i mean dh) a week.

Have you tried Resolve teats - they have a slit in them instead of a hole so baby regulated flow? I always used them.

Friend swore by Tommy Tippee teats for wide necked bottle.

Remember though that babies do not always need feeding when you are away. Depends on length of time. I sometimes think babies get put off becuae the babysitter thinks they must be hungry and try to get them to take milk when they don't want it. No baby has ever starved.