SIL in crisis, baby has forgotten how to take a bottle!!!

[largeginandtonic]

My sil has been exclusively BF my nephew since birth. She had a very bad cracked nipple and thrush in one breast so expressed and gave him a bottle.

This has all healed now so she has dropped the bottle for a few weeks.

My nephew was due to start going to his CM for a few settling in sessions as she is due to go back to work.

For the past few days she and her dh have tried giving him a bottle but he won't take it! She says it is like he has forgotten how to. They have tried the Avent bottles (he took those before) and the Tomee Tipee breast shaped ones.

She has tried him before boob and mid boob when he is calm and ravenous. Her dh and his mum have tried too.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Maybe start on cup training? Or sippy cup-type thing? Does he have water? And what in?

He does not have water, he is only 13 weeks. Too small for a sippy cup i think.

She is kicking herself for not keeping up the bottles, but i have said to her you never know what will happen.

One of mine wouldnot take a bottle at all, he was 16 months when i stopped BF him.

13 weeks should be doable for cup training from an open cup - obv he wouldn't hold it himself, but should be able to manage to drink off the surface? Maybe start with water so as not to waste the ebm?

Will mention it to her, thanks

she could try a first years breast flow bottle, can get them in mothercare. this is the only bottle dd1 would except after initially being happy with an avent one.The baby latches on to it more like breast feeding.

I have seen those, they look very boob like.

Have told her

Have a very similar problem with my 13 week DS2 - took occassional bottles fine early on, skipped a few weeks, and now won't do it. However, he did take a 4oz ebm bottle at a 10pm sleepy feed the other day without any complaint, followed by breast feed - so from this week I'm going to try and start regular sleepy bottle feeds and then hope he'll agree to take a daytime bottle feed. Maybe you could try a sleepy rather than daytime feed to start with?

I've also just bought a tommee tippee "easiflow bottle to cup trainer" (basically a sippy cup type thing) to try, as it said 3 months+ on label. Will report back if it works.

For what it's worth I could never get DS1 to take bottle, even from early on - though luckily only wanted him to do it for convenience, rather than because of need to put him in to childcare. At about 4.5 months I started to give him a sippy cup (actually small avent bottle with sippy lid) with tiny bit of water in it to play with. He basically taught himself to use the sippy lid. Would recommend trying this - though my 13 week old certainly can't hold anything yet so guess it's not going to be an immediate solution.

When DS1 got to 6 months he did go in to nursery 4 afternoons - then he was was given one formula feed per day in a sippy lidded beaker. He could manage this fine, though often took v limited amount and preferred to increase bf volume at other feed times (guess he didn't like the formula as much as breast milk).