BF 3 week old will only settle to sleep on breast - human soother!

[Salire86]

Hi,

Baby is three weeks old and I just started to express milk in the evening to give straight away with a bottle. I had tried getting my partner to give it to her so I could get a few hours sleep but she’s reluctant to take it from him. She will take it from me so we are gradually getting her used to dad holding the bottle.

However, once she has about 90mls drank she’s shouting for more. I would have thought this was a large amount for a small baby. She won’t go asleep for her dad and when I give her the breast for a top up she falls asleep within two mins after barely getting anything.

Has anyone else experienced this? I know it’s very early days but I’m afraid she’s always going to rely on me to go to sleep. If this is the case o don’t think I could maintain breastfeeding. Lately she’s been waking nearly every hour during the night to be fed for less than 10 mins before falling asleep. The exhaustion is getting to me!

My baby, now 14 months never took a bottle and still feeds to sleep and several times during the night. It is without a doubt tough going and I have had to miss many nights out/hen parties etc because of it. I was supposed to have a hen weekend away when she was 7 months and I tried hard for weeks to get her to take a bottle which caused us all a lot of stress and upset, eventually gave up and didn't go. I have put her to bed every single night since she was born as she gets herself in a hysterical state if anyone else tries to. I love that I have been able to feed her myself but it never even crossed my mind that she wouldn't take a bottle and i would never of been able to leave her over night at over a year old. If I knew then what I know now would I have carried on breastfeeding, in all honesty probably not!

Just to add though I ebf until she was 7 weeks then tried to offer a bottle for the 1st time and she was having none of it, just screamed as soon as I put the bottle in her mouth. If your DD is drinking some I think you could just keep persisting with a bottle a day or something and you will probably manage to bf and she will still take a bottle

Ahhh I empathise OP, it's really, really relentless in the beginning. Every baby is different, but yes, many babies do accept bottles when a tiny bit older. Milk at night has different properties to day time milk, please double check this but I'm pretty sure it has a different composition than daytime, and it might be that if you can face expressing at a reasonable time at the night she will drink it the next evening? Do you have any BFing support groups or anything nearby? 3 weeks seems like a lifetime when you're exhausted, but she is still tiny. I found 6 weeks a bit of a turning point, and then 12 weeks when a routine led by DS started to emerge. Also napping during the day really helped, will she settle in a Moses basket or anything during the day? If you do want to keep BFing it does help to use a really slow flow teat on bottles as it's easier for baby once they accept them (if they do)- MAM have a high acceptance rate.

Getting them used to a bottle takes persistence but in both my cases was successful, whilst continuing breastfeeding to sleep most nights - it did take a few weeks and a lot of tears though!

Try some different bottles - DD1 would only accept Nuk with a latex teat (softer and more nipple like!) but DD2 wouldn't have that and prefers Mam.

Could you try something like wrapping a t-shirt you've been wearing around the bottle, or laying it over daddy's chest, so baby gets your scent?

Also warming the bottle teat is a good tip.

To answer your question, yes - mine started taking a bottle with no issues at 12 weeks. (She did look a bit surprised the first time though!)

Some babies will take a bottle and some won’t... people telling you theirs did/didn’t at various ages won’t tell you whether your baby will or won’t. But what I’m saying is if you don’t fancy your baby being 100% reliant on you for the first year or so if it’s life (ie you’d like to go out on your own sometimes, or get some extra sleep once in a while) then you may want to move to bottle feeding sooner than you’d original planned/envisaged. I really wish I had known this but I was really naive. I’m still really annoyed about it. I love her but it is very restrictive.