Introducing a bottle at 3 months

[Betsyboo87]

Has anyone had any success with introducing a bottle at 3mo or are we wasting our time? DS is feeding 10 times a day and at night I don’t think I’ve slept more than 1.5hrs in a row for weeks. DH is really keen to take some of the pressure off but DS isn’t taking a bottle. He’ll happily have the teat in his mouth and likes to hold the bottle but he just won’t drink it. Does anyone have any tips? We’ve tried both expressed milk and formula.

I’m so frustrated as for the first 6/7 weeks we successfully gave a bottle or two a day. I felt really pressured to move to EBF by health professionals (not in the UK) so we stopped. I wish I’d listened to myself.

Have you tried the MAM bottles? I had to try about 4 different types before my youngest finally accept the MAM ones. Good luck!!

Keep persisting and you'll get there. Get your partner to do it. My daughter was the same but I tried every couple of days for a month or so and she got used to it.

Thanks both. We’ve tried MAM, Tommee Tippee and Medela. For the last few days we’ve just been using MAM for consistency. I’ve tried leaving DS alone with DH for a couple of hours and he’s offered a bottle but no success. It’s good to know that it has eventually worked for others so we’ll continue to try.

It’s such a pain isn’t it! They make you scared to try a bottle in case the baby refuses the nipple but actually they then won’t take a bottle so mum
Never gets a feeding break.

The first person my baby took the bottle from was my mil so maybe worth trying someone totally different- although not so easy with covid.

What teat number are you trying? Could you go up a bigger one and see if that makes a difference? Maybe if y I have a fast let down baby is annoying at bottle?

@OverTheRainbow88 yes exactly this. My midwife was always saying to avoid formula unless really necessary or DS will stop bf.

I think I do have a fast letdown. He only takes 5-7mins to feed. We have the no 1 teats on the MAM bottles now but I do have the 2 so we could try.

My DM would happily take him for the night but as we’re abroad they would have to quarantine here and then quarantine back in the UK too if they visit so it’s not possible. We really don’t have much support here unfortunately.