Getting 7 week old to take bottle

[Bellesjp]

Dd is 7 weeks old and EBF, have been trying to get her to take a bottle of expressed BM since she was 4 weeks with absolutely no luck :(

She took the first bottle no problem at all so I thought oh this is going to be easy! Then refused from then on.. occasionally after a bit of a battle she will give in and take it but is not accepting it really. Sometimes she will completely refuse.

Have tried mam, Lansinoh and Tommee tippee bottles in case she preferred any others. Have tried leaving her with someone else, my mum and partner. She's best taking it from me if she'll have any at all.

Really need her to be able to have a bottle now and again as I need to be able to leave her to sort my horses. Have been taking her in a carrier but it's hard and also id like to be able to have a break as bad as that sounds!

Any tips?

It doesn't sound bad and I do sympathise as both of mine were bottle refusers.

I'm sure you'll get someone along soon with some tips but one thing your DM and DP could try is offering a cup rather than a bottle. We had some success with this.

Have they read How to Bottle feed the BF baby in Kellymom?

I was going to say trying a flexable cup.
Once she was four months old, my second child would take small drinks from a cup, but only boiled water.
She gagged and hated any bottle, spoon or dummy until she was nearly nine months old. From then on she quickly became an expert at eating and drinking from a cup.
My other children did not have this problem.

Pick one bottle and stick with that.

Try to give an oz or so during the day but not as a full feed or as anything other than a 'let's try this'. Try not to stress and offer it in a paced feeding way (have a google for video)

If that doesn't work, a cup might be better. From 6 months they can have milk in a sippy cup as well.

How long do you need to do the horses? The other option is looking at timings of when you go. In another couple of weeks you might start to see some patterns emerging with her feeds. You can help this rhythm by getting her up at the same time each day. So say at 7am you get up, get her dressed, give her a feed and come down stairs. That can spark a rhythm which makes her feed times more predictable.

Then you might find you have some 3 hour windows in the day between feeds. Can you use these for horses? Could be a temporary solution until 6/7 months when you start weaning and they start dropping milk feeds.

I had to do this with my youngest and it worked really well. By 3 months I had a couple of regular 3 hour periods in the day when I could reliably leave her without her needing a feed.