Returning to work at 7 months - bottle refuser

[londonliv]

My DD is 4 months and I am doing shared parental leave which means I return to work when she is 7 months & DH will take over.

I tried a bottle on DD today & she was having none of it. I'm now at a total panic that she will still be like this when I return to work.

Does anyone have any tips/reassurance? What if she refuses the bottle when I go back & she's with DH??

It might take a couple of tries, don't give up OP. Try again once in a while over the course of a week and see if she gets used to it? Some kids take longer than others with the bottle and that's totally fine

Mine was a bottle refuse as well but I just gave her one every day at the same time and eventually she drank it. Took about 2 weeks I think. Just be patient and persevere x

Mines 8 months and a refuser, following for advice as I have tried every kind of bottle and teat and she totally wont accept

My DD is also a bottle refuser and I actually gave up and bought a cup instead (munchkin 360 cup). It's a bit messier but DD happily drinks from that and maybe we'll be able to skip bottles all together.

Don’t worry about it.

It may seem a big thing now but by the time she’s 7m she will be weaning, and milk schedules and volume of milk will become more flexible.

I had a bottle refuser :). I also went back at 7m. She just fed before I went to work, had yoghurt/cheese/cereal as snacks at normal milk time, then had a big feed when I got home.

She did pick up a night feed for a while to make up but that was no big deal. Weekends she went back to her normal routine.

My first was also a bottle refuser. Because I didn’t know once weaning started it was perfectly possible to be away for the day, i had to force the bottles and switch to formula completely as she wouldn’t mix feed. Once i got her to take a bottle she wouldn’t bf.

With my second she had issues which meant continued bf was best for her. So i did my research, we gave it a go, and we bf for 2 years with me working :)

So at 7m bottles aren’t essential. You can work round it.

I had this at 7 months. Tried everything. Ours liked mam bottles and to have the milk hot (above 43 degrees). She still wouldn't take the bottle when I went back though. I was pumping and it was stressful because we didn't want to waste the milk. Essentially, she took it when she was thirsty enough. This meant we all had a stressful day; but once it was over we never had an issue again. Good luck.

She is more likely to take a bottle from your OH than you. And by 7 months, she can have a bf from you first thing in the morning, solid food and water to drink all day then a couple more bf when you get home from work. Don't worry now, 3 months is a long time for a baby, and it will work out.

Thank you. I'm desperately trying not to focus on it too much right now (I have a tendency to over stress things) so will keep trying at the same time each day

We did the same OP with my eldest DC, I went back to work at 7 months and DH took 3 months' leave. DS was a boob addict and total bottle refuser for me, but when I was out of the house he took a bottle from DH fine. Oddly he liked it fridge-cold, but he was teething at the time so the teat may have been nice for him. We used Medela calma bottles.

Also, he massively reverse-cycled (sorry!) So he fed loads at evenings and in the night, and we kept feeding until 23 months.