tips needed pls...breast feed baby to take a bottle

[weston]

my daughter is 8 weeks and I want her to get used to taking at least one bottle of formula a day but she seems to not be very keen on bottles or any form of plastic in her mouth....can manage it if its a dream feed or has just woken from long sleep...if we just perserve will she grow used to them? need to be able to leave her sometimes...have tried different bottles mamm seem the best, using aptamil, get my husband to do it...anything else can try?? she wont take a dummy either

My son wouldn't take a dummy and hated bottles in his mouth. Eventually became a thumb sucker

Then finally at 6 months found one made by NUK that he liked. Perhaps if you use expressed milk to begin with, as she is familiar with that, you'll have more luck? Also perhaps if someone else introduces the bottle? As your baby will smell your milk and may refuse the bottle. You may need to persevere. If your baby is nice and hungry before you try as well that may help. Stay calm if she refuses and try chatting to her to distract her etc.

If she refuses just try again in a bit, I wouldn't offer breast, you may find sooner or later she'll take it and suck away hungrily.

That's my tip for what it's worth, some other MN may have a good one for you though

It is natural for a very young breastfed baby to show a preference for her mother's breast and not for unfamiliar plastic teats.

Unless you are going to be leaving her at nursery very soon. I would forget about offering bottles at this early stage. Research shows that offering a bottle from a young age does not prevent the baby rejecting a bottle later on.

Therefore if there is no reason to give a bottle yet, then it would be easier for you and your baby, to give a breastfeed instead of the nightly bottle.

Depending on her age when you need to leave her, she might never need to use a bottle. Babies as young as 6 months can be taught to use a cup (with help). Or you might find as she gets older she doesn't mind using a bottle, either way there is no point in upsetting you both at this point

Sorry just noticed in your OP that you have to leave your baby 'sometimes'. How often will you be leaving her and for how long ?

If we are talking about the odd hour here or there, whilst you get your hair cut or have a bath, then even at a couple of months old, your baby should be fine with daddy. Assuming you intend on leaving straight after a feed and are contactable just in case.

Hey,

A lot of people might not agree with this, but; Take your breast pad out of your bra, cut small hole in it, push teat through the hole, give daddy bottle and baby then LEAVE! do not be close enough to even hear the battles! always do it at the same time every day.

It does work, thing is my 2 year old will now only let daddy put him to bed as it's what they got used to!

Hi,

My DD1 had a dummy at about 4 weeks as it was clear she needed to suck to get her to sleep. I did what your not supposed to do and dipped it in grip water the first few times and she took it. Very soon after she started having a bottle at evening feed from daddy with expressed milk. She took it no problem the first few times then she refused to have it. We warmed it slightly and she took it again. I have since added formula to the expressed milk and now she has just formula at her evening feed. She is very sensitive to temperature tho and wont take it if its not exactly the temp she wants it! We use tommee tippee bottles. She will also take the bottle from me now no problems.

Our baby had a marked preference for the tommee tippee closer to nature bottles, but mostly we just had to keep trying - sometimes she was fine with it, sometimes not at all. We never tried to force the issue and if I wasn't there (curiously she usually accepted a bottle from me even when she wouldn't from anyone else) and she refused a feed, she seemed happy just to wait for me to breastfeed her later. When she came to spend longer periods at nursery she got the idea pretty quickly though.

When I introduced some formula feeds she didn't even seem to notice the difference...but that may just be ours!

great thanks for the tips, a few new ones i hadn't though of there! thank you

for those who succeeded how many weeks did it take before the bottle didn't seem seem like a bottle of poison to them???

the first time (at about 4 weeks) about two days then for some reason we let it lapse at around 12 weeks and restarted a little later, when it took about 2 weeks for her to take it most of the time, and another 4 or so for it to be completely normal

not all that much time really but long enough for me to post panicking questions here and worry that I'd never be able to leave her at nursery!

funnily enough she never complained about being hungry, even though she yelled the place down when faced with the bottle, she just compensated by feeding more from me when she got the chance. To judge by responses on here that's reasonably common and there's some helpful information on the kellymom website here about compensating in this way