DD won't take the bottle

[spoons]

3 mth old DD, wanted to try a bottle to give more flexibility for feeding in public with EBM. Point blank refuses it, we have spent heaps on different bottles, teats etc and still no joy. Health visitor recommended Doidy cup, but not sure what age to start this as the cup has no lid/spout. Have read other posts but would appreciate any advice on what cups had been used when skipping bottle phase altogether, and at what age? All help gratefully received.

Ideally you start offering a bottle at 4 weeks. Generally IME and on loads of posts here it's hard to get the transition to work after 3 months until gone 7 months. I've never heard of a Doidy cup so can't help there. My dd took water and other liquids from cups and bottles from very early on but would never take milk from anything other than me until she was 9 months old. Boy did I kick myself for not having started her on a bottle earlier!

doidy cups are good but only when they are old enough to hold it themselves, at least i think so anyway. i also think it is a good idea to skip the bottle stage if you can if you are going to breastfeed til they are about 6 months or more. my dd was a nightmare but in the end she preferred the old fashioned cups with the hard spout. you can get non spill versions. now though she drinks from anything and everything. hth! xxx

The very subject was the reason I found mumsnet in my desperation!. If you have a look on this topic there wil be several threads, all saying pretty much the same thing - that it just takes time. Some people do go straight to beakers/doidy cups, and from a pretty early age, although I can't remember if anyone did from 3 months. Other posters may be able to help on this.

My experience was that we tried this with dd at around 4 months and it took a good couple of weeks at least to take the bottle. I remember (fortunately this was before my maternity leave ended) going up to dd's nursery to bfeed her as they were having no luck. One thing we did which may or may not have helped was that we gave her bottles to play with and roll the teat in her mouth even when it wasn't feeding time, just so she got used to the feel of the teat, as part of the probelem seemed to be that she just had no idea what to do with the teat and didn't like the feel in her mouth. We also tried dozens of different types of teat, as they are all so different. I don't remember the name, but what worked for her was a brown teat, which was slightly flattened. Long post but HTH

i started mixed-feeding DD at 4 months, with expressed milk to start with. would agree that it takes a bit of persistence, but maybe we were lucky, DD 'got' it within a fortnight. DH took over the late evening feed (around 10-11) as my supply seemed really low then; it was always a feed she seemed very hungry for, so there was an incentive there.

incidentally we stuck to the same bottle (avent) with easyflow teat -- it's tempting to assume the baby hates the specific teat, and to go out the next day and buy another, but IMO it's just the change babies are confused by. save your pennies!

also, i kept well out of the way, subscribing to theory that if you're not around, smelling of YOU, the baby is more likely to take the feed. i think maybe it took about a fortnight before she got the hang of it properly. there was loads of howling and grumbling initially, but i tried not to take it personally (the hard bit)...

DH was keen to get involved, and that helps hugely.

if it's what you want to do, stick at it!

hi spoons
Well, I had the same problem. My ds took th bottle very happily at 6 weeks for a whike. then it just wasn't necessary, my dh went back to owrk so I just did all of the bf through day and night as I was home
at about 13 weeks we tried to re-introduce the bottle. NO GO!!
We tried all sorts.
in the end I started with a tommee tippy cup at about 5 months. I used to offer it to him 3 times daily. When we started weaning he would get a bottle and the cup at each meal.
Sorry to say it was on;y when we was about 7.5 months that he started to drink from the cup. He now doesn't have bottles at all. I did our last bf a couple of weeks ago- he's 14months now.
It may just be a while before you get him onto cups etc. Was there a reason that you needed to do it?

forgot to say that he made me cry the other day. Atm& t group he stole a bottel of milk from another baby and drank what she had left. I can't believe he did it. I spent hours and hours trying to get him to take a bottle, just for a few hours sleep!!
He just sat at drained the bloody thing. I was so upset!

Can only re-iterate what Crumpet has just said that it takes time. Having had problems with DD1 (when we introduced a bottle at around 12 weeks and it then took around 4 weeks) we were determined not to make the same mistake with DD2. So from around 4 weeks we started giving bottles of EBM, which she took no problem. We then got to cocky, left it for a few weeks (between about 9 and 11/12 weeks) and bloody disaster she wouldn't entertain it. It then took us about 3/4 weeks again to get her comfortable and now at 21 weeks she is quite happy.

Found Nubby teats a bit shorter and she seemed to like them and DH found she prefered being fed lying down initally (now is quite happy to sit upright)so really a long winded way of saying just keep trying, everyday if you can and she will get there eventually with a bottle.

But now to answer your question - DD1 was rubbish with any type of cup until about 5 months the used an anyway up cup happily. DD2 will use a non-spill cup from Mothercare which has an adjustable flow and will use this for water - from about 16 weeks. But will not entertain milk in this cup. I also have a Tommee Tippee cup which has a soft spout, and is if I recall correctly suitable from 3 months, which she will drink EBM from but not take a 'feed' from iykwim. (Looks like a cross between a bottle and a cup and is purple with sticky out handle bits.)

HTH

Christ how long does it take me to post!! Also meant to add that DD2 uses a newborn teat still at 21 weeks - not sure if relevant or not really.

(Have had way too much wine tonight so apologies for rambles.....)

hi - first time that I've posted but I'm a long-term luker

dd (now 5 months old) took a bottle of EBM a about 8 weeks but then has point blank refused it since - she really just didn't have a clue what to do with the teat

I was getting worried as am going back to work soon and we tried several teats, dh doing it, my mum doing it etc etc to no avail

I then tried a heinz cup that was freeflow but too much milk came out and she kept choking so then I tried the growing up cup from Mothercare (where you can adjust the flow rate) and it's worked very well for us - she can manage 3oz of milk now. We tried it every day at lunchtime (was a bit annoying making sure I was at home each day at the right time - I found doing it when there were no distractions for her worked better) for about 2 weeks and she slowly got the hang of it

my HV (who has been spectacularly useless otherwise) suggested feeding her by positioning her facing me so dd wouldn't think she was getting a breast feed. I fed her in the bouncy chair and that's worked best for us

Jamie has never drank from a bottle, i bought him a non drip trainer cup from boots at 3 1/2 months and he loved it , it's a bit messy to start with but at least you can feed her out in public, I just took about 5 bibs with me whenever went out